


Baby Daddy

by DiscontentedWinter



Series: Baby Daddy [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, As soon as I figure out what's going on here, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Rape/Non-con, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Threats of Violence, because Kate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-08-23 12:57:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 55,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16619414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: Laura Hale decides it's time to expand her pack. And Stiles could really use the money. And Derek... well, that's when things get complicated.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emma_Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma_Sea/gifts).



> If you've read Well, This is Awkward, then you already know the premise. This is not that story! This is the longer and angstier version that I promised. Updates will not be every day though, because I need to learn how to prioritise! 
> 
> Also, this fic is a gift to Emma Sea, who has had a hell of a year, and whose birthday it is today! Happy birthday, Emma!

Back when Laura was a kid, her Uncle Peter was stupidly in love with this girl who was stupidly in love with this movie where this girl missed the train, and that one little action changed everything. Laura, nine-years-old and allergic to boy germs and anything gross like kissing, had not been impressed, either with the dumb movie or with the dumb girl. Luckily she only had to suffer through a few instances of Uncle Peter “baby-sitting” and making out with the girl on the couch before he dumped her for her twin brother. Because Peter has always been an asshole, apparently. Point is, Laura hated that movie, but there are _moments_ in life, okay? There are moments that can change everything.

Laura likes to think of that, sometimes. She’ll sit on the fire escape of their shitty apartment, drinking coffee so black it tastes like tar, and smoking cigarettes because it annoys Derek, and she’ll wonder what might have happened if only one tiny thing had been different.

Is there a universe where Derek didn’t stumble into Kate Argent’s path?

Is there a universe where their family didn’t burn?

And is there even a universe where Laura met a crazed werewolf in the woods, and her shock at seeing it was Peter was so great that she _didn’t_ step back quickly enough, and the last thing she felt was his claws slashing across her throat?

Maybe.

There’s a universe for everything, right? Accepting that makes it hard to hate what happened, because it could always be worse. Laura is the alpha now, and Derek is her beta, and Peter is—well, Peter is Peter, but he’s much less crazy now—and the universe is random, and chance is a fucking bitch, but Laura thinks she’s finally figuring out how to listen to it and take a goddamn hint.

And right now it feels like the universe is slapping her in the face with this…this _kid_.

The kid has been coming into the diner where Laura works for a few months now, always late at night, and always buzzing like he’s on something. They get a lot of that in this neighborhood, but the kid doesn’t smell of anything except Adderall, which Laura guesses explains his twitchiness. He’s about eighteen or nineteen, probably a student by the weird hours he keeps, and he always pays his bill in small change. He tips well, but usually in pennies and nickels, which is a pain in the ass, but better than no tip at all.

And he smells like something that—for the first time since coming back to Beacon Hills six months ago—feels like _home_.

He smells like the Preserve. He smells like long summers spent running barefoot in the woods. He smells like loam and pine needles and abelia blossoms. He smells like home the way it was—long days and golden twilights and wood cracking in a campfire.

Laura hasn’t been able to set foot on her family’s property since she came back. She and Derek share a shitty apartment on the shitty side of town. Laura can’t bring herself to go and stand where the house once did. She’s seen pictures online; the charred bones of the Hale house are a favorite for local photographers, and they popped right up on Google maps when Laura was looking to see where the Goodwill store had moved to. It hurt enough to see the ruins online; Laura doesn’t want to see them in person. Not yet. She’s not ready, and she doesn’t think she ever will be. She wants to remember it the way it was, and that’s hard enough already.

In the meantime, she serves the kid coffee as charcoal black as the burnt cedar frame of the house she was born in, and tries not to look too obvious when she leans in to inhale the kid’s scent.

It’s a Wednesday night, almost midnight, and the kid has been sitting on a plate of curly fries and a cup of coffee that Laura has refilled three times already in the hour he’s been there. He’s pale, with dark shadows under his eyes. He’s hunched over a textbook, highlighting relevant passages. When Laura refills his mug for the fourth time, she notices that most of the page is highlighted.

“You’re at the community college, right?” she asks him.

He blinks up at her. “Yeah. Accountancy.”

“That sounds inter—”

“I hate it,” the kid snaps. He scowls down at his textbook. “I fucking _hate_ it so much.”

Laura blinks at the sudden venom in his tone.

“God,” the kid says, closing his textbook. He sighs, and rubs his hands over his face. “Sorry. It’s been a rough week, and I’m an asshole at the best of times. Sorry.”

Laura glances around the diner, but her only other customer is Harold, the town’s elderly drunk, and he’s asleep in a booth. She sits down opposite the kid. “Want to talk about it?”

The kid narrows his eyes at her. “Are you serious?”

Laura shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just figured everyone in town already knew my deal,” the kid says. “I’m Stiles. Stiles Stilinski. My dad’s the sheriff.”

Laura looks at him blankly.

“Oh, you really are new in town, aren’t you?” Stiles snorts. “My dad got shot in the line of duty about eight months ago now, right before I graduated high school. He’s been on sick leave ever since. I was supposed to be on a full ride to GWU in D.C., but my dad’s sick pay barely covers the mortgage, let alone getting him any home help, and the way the insurance company is dragging things out, he won’t see any money from the county for years yet.” He closes his textbook, and sighs. “So my plans changed, you know?”

His voice is calmer now, but there’s something in his gaze that’s a little distant, as though he’s staring right past Laura, right past Beacon Hills, into a future that he never got the chance to live.

“Yeah,” Laura says. “I know. My name’s Laura.”

Stiles’s forehead creases. “Yeah. It says so on your name badge.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Laura _Hale_.”

There’s a flicker of recognition in his eyes, and then he pales. “Oh. Oh _shit_.”

“I know a few things about rough weeks,” Laura says.

She knows a few things about giving up her dreams as well. And she knows guilt, and loss, and pain and fear. She was scared, and she ran, and a part of Peter will never forgive her for that. It’s okay. A part of Laura won’t forgive herself either. But eighteen-year-old Laura was still a child in so many ways, too young to step into her mother’s shoes. Too young to know what to do, when she felt so afraid and so alone. When all her pack bonds had been severed by the fire, except the one tethering her to Derek. And even though Peter had still been alive, breathing on his wheezing hospital ventilator, she hadn’t _felt_ him. She’d thought he’d gone too, the parts of him that were _him_ , and there had been nothing left but the machine. She’d been so wrong about that.

Stiles throat clicks as he swallows.

Laura smiles slightly at him. “If you want to bitch about how unfair your life is, I’m not going to judge you for it. I’ve been there.”

Stiles exhales heavily. His fingers beat a nervous tattoo along the laminate tabletop. “Sometimes I resent my dad for getting shot. How fucked up is _that_?”

“Pretty fucked up,” Laura says quietly. “Sometimes I hate my family for dying. I mean, how _could_ they? I wasn’t ready to be the one in charge.”

Stiles swallows again, and looks away quickly. He swipes at his eyes quickly with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Yeah. I get it.”

From over in the other booth, Harold snorts himself awake. “Wh—wha—”

Laura reaches out and puts her hand over his. She squeezes gently, and his scent softens again into that sweetness that is reminiscent of the Preserve. “I should go deal with him.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He flashes her a smile. “Thanks, Laura.” 

“Anytime, Stiles.” She stands, and goes to refill Harold’s coffee before he can complain. When she looks around again, Stiles has gone back to his textbook, his posture more relaxed now than before they spoke.  

 

***

 

Laura and Derek live in a loft on Lincoln Street. It’s semi-converted, which Laura thinks means the developer ran out of money before he finished turning the place from a shithole into something actually habitable. The loft is caught somewhere in the middle. It has running water and heat, but also holes in the walls. The rent is cheap though.

Derek picks up a job as a bouncer at some dive bar downtown. Peter calls it playing to his strengths; he gets to wear his leather jacket and get paid for glowering. The hours he keeps are as bad as Laura’s. They’ve both become more or less nocturnal, and Laura worries it’s like taking a step backwards. At least she has her regulars to talk to at the diner. Who does Derek talk to? Nobody, probably. He goes to work when it’s dark, and comes home when it’s dawn, and if he says more than two words to anyone during his shift, Laura would eat her hat.

If she owned a hat.

She worries about Derek. She worries about his silences, and his scowls, and sometimes she wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and see if the brother she remembers falls out: funny as hell, and fun to be around. A little smartass, just like a younger brother should be. The thorn in her side, and the pebble in her shoe. She misses him, probably as acutely as he misses the old Laura.

She was different too, back then.

Laura and Derek don’t need the money their jobs bring them, not now they’re back in Beacon Hills and have access to the Hale vault again, but they’re both used to living like this. Sometimes Laura wonders if it means, in their hearts, they’re still running. Laura is still afraid, she supposes, but her alpha wolf is growing stronger. This is _her_ territory. Laura doesn’t want to run anymore. She wants to stand.

She wants to rebuild a home in her territory. She wants to rebuild a _pack_.

She lies awake at night, listening to Derek’s heartbeat through the wall, and decides that they’re home now.

They’re  _home_.

She just needs to start believing it.

No, more than that.

She needs to start acting like it.

She has her territory back: she needs to build a pack.

 

***

 

The weeks draw on. Summer softens slowly toward fall, and Laura starts to look forward to those strange hours when Stiles wanders into the diner, and takes a seat in a booth with all his books spread out around him. He’s usually tired, anxious, and his scent smells a little bitter with it, but he always has a smile for her, and they fall into an easy familiarity. He reminds her of a little brother. She lost two of those in the fire. Three, if she counts Derek.

Most days she counts Derek.

Stiles bitches a lot about having no money, but not in a way like he’s angling for any. Why would he be? He has no way of knowing that Laura has any more than he does. He bitches to her like he expects her to be in the same shitty boat, and she _was_. For years she and Derek had been living from paycheck to paycheck—whenever either one of them could actually get a paycheck-- because that was just another thing Laura hadn’t known: how to access the money their parents left them. Wasn’t like she could just walk into a bank, tell them who she was, and expect them to hand over the cash. That was something Peter had sorted out for them when they were back in Beacon Hills, because Peter knows about lawyers and insurance and inheritance and all those things that Laura didn’t.

There was so much she didn’t know, and she was afraid that if she’d asked some stranger that hunters might have found where she and Derek were.

There was so much she didn’t know.

Stiles is the same. She watches him sometimes, as he painstakingly goes through letters from the hospital, from the insurance company, from banks and lawyers, trying to get a handle on exactly how much debt he’s drowning in. And it’s hard. She can see that written in his creased forehead.

He’s not much older than Laura was when her world fell apart too.

Laura feels a rush of sympathy for him.

“It’s hard,” she says, helping herself to one of his curly fries and dipping it in the pool of ketchup on his plate. “Do you have anyone you can ask for help?”

“No.” Stiles makes a face. “I mean, the Department did a fundraiser and that helped a lot, but all that money went straight to medical bills, you know?” He drags a hand over his face. “It’s hard, but it’s not like we aren’t managing. It’s just… things are tight, that’s all. We’re stuck in this shitty place where Dad’s not well enough to work, but doesn’t actually hit any of the right criteria to get benefits. And he’s busting his gut with his physical rehab, but you can’t rush that either. Just… ugh. Once he’s well enough to go back to work, things’ll get a hell of a lot easier. It’s just… it’s just gonna be rough for a while.”  

Laura knows that feeling.

The next night, Stiles tells her about his Jeep, and the five hundred dollars he’s been quoted to replace the starter motor.

“Guess I’m catching the bus to college now,” he says, inhaling the steam from his coffee.

So no, he’s not starving to death or living on the streets or anything, but every time she sees him Laura thinks he’s been a little more battered by his circumstances, a little more worn down. And he’s always so tired.

She wants to help him, but she knows he won’t take charity.

“You know,” she tells him, “you’re here every night. You might as well wash a few dishes.”

“Yeah?” His face brightens at that, and he flashes her a smile.

She likes Stiles. She likes his scent.

He reminds her of family.

She wants to rebuild her pack.

Really, when the idea hits her, Laura’s surprised it took as long as it did. 


	2. Chapter 2

Derek comes awake from the same old nightmare, gasping for breath in a world that tastes like ash and thick, choking smoke. Stupid, since the fire was already out by the time he made it to the house, but since when do nightmares have to make sense? He lurches upright, sucking in a ragged breath, and the night air chills his sweat-slick skin.

It’s dark.

It’s quiet.

In the distance he can hear a siren, but it might be miles away. Noise at night travels strangely.

From the room next door he can hear Laura’s heartbeat. It’s a little fast, a little too strong for sleep.

“Bad dream,” he murmurs into the darkness.

She doesn’t answer him, but he hears the rustle of her sheets and comforter as she settles back down in her bed.

Derek reaches for his phone. He keeps it on the nightstand beside his bed, although “nightstand” is an exaggeration. It’s a plastic crate he took from work, brought home, and upended beside his bed. It does what it’s supposed to do.

The screen on his phone tells him it’s 4:32 a.m.

He didn’t work last night, but Laura did, until two. So, great. She’d probably barely gotten to sleep before he woke her up with his nightmare.

Ever since they came back to Beacon Hills, Laura has been working at an all-night diner. Derek works a few shifts a week as a bouncer at a club. They’re not great jobs, but they’re _something_. Something to do instead of sitting around wondering what the fuck is going to go wrong next.

Derek hates that they came back here at all. He doesn’t know why they couldn’t just keep moving, but Laura has her alpha instincts and they’ve been pulling her back towards Beacon Hills for a while now. It’s her territory, and it’s harder for her to ignore that than it is for Derek. He’s a beta. His territory is wherever his alpha is, and for a long time that was a collection of shady motel rooms and crappy apartments on the east coast. Coming back to Beacon Hills hasn’t settled anything inside him. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Sometimes, when the wind is right, it carries the scent of the Preserve into town, and homesickness hits Derek in the gut like a fist. Homesickness, and longing. It’s worse somehow, because the Preserve is right there, but it’s still not home. It can never be home again, he thinks, despite what Laura wants, because of what happened there to their family.

Derek doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. He can’t. He lies awake and waits until dawn.

 

***

 

On Friday and Saturday nights, Derek is partnered up with Boyd on the door of the club. The club is a shithole, basically, and the clientele reflects that. There are usually at least one or two fights every evening, and while it’s nothing Derek couldn’t handle on his own, he likes knowing Boyd’s got his back. Boyd is big and quiet. Derek likes him. He doesn’t talk much about his personal life. Derek knows he works days at the tire place out by the exit to the highway, and he knows he has a girlfriend, but she doesn’t come to the club. Something about the flashing lights. Other than that he doesn’t know much about Vernon Boyd at all, but Derek likes him.

It’s been a long time since he was comfortable enough to turn his back on someone, but he finds he can do that with Boyd. There’s just something about his calm, solid presence that Derek trusts. It’s been so long that Derek doesn’t know what to do with a revelation like that, so he guards the feeling carefully and, when Laura badgers him about whether or not he’s made any friends yet, he grunts and refuses to be drawn further into any conversation.

Laura seems better since they came back to Beacon Hills, more settled somehow, and a part of Derek hates her for it. A part of him is jealous of her.

He wishes they were still living in shitty hotel rooms and shittier apartments. At least when they were on the run they weren’t _here_.

Sometimes he drives past the coffee shop on Main where he remembers being sixteen-years-old and stumbling over a complicated coffee order, because he wanted to get Kate the exact one she liked.

Sometimes he drives past the high school, where he first caught a glimpse of the beautiful new substitute teacher, and his heart skipped over a few beats.

Sometimes he drives past the turnoff to Harper’s Bluff or, as the kids probably still call it, Makeout Point, and he can still smell her perfume, cloying and sickly sweet in his memory now, although he never hated it at the time.

And sometimes at night he hears sirens as a fire truck hurtles down the street, and his blood runs cold.

 

***

 

Peter turns up every Sunday morning with bagels. He lives over on Maple, in an airy modern apartment. Derek has only been there once or twice. Everything was so new, apart from the books, that the smells made his nose twitch. It didn’t smell lived-in last time Derek visited. It didn’t smell like pack. Neither does the loft, really, but at least it makes no pretence of being a home.

Derek had commented once on how everything in Peter’s place was so sterile.

And Peter had only raised his eyebrows. “ _Sterile_? I’ll tell you what sterile is, nephew. It’s hospital-grade disinfectant, bleach, and ammonia. I’ve got fucking years of _sterile_ behind me!”

Derek had flinched back, and Peter had turned away, and neither of them had mentioned it again.

Still, Peter turns up every Sunday morning, and Derek makes the attempt to remember who he was before the fire. Who they _all_ were. Peter was the fun uncle once, and Laura and Derek adored him. It’s all gone now. They’re all broken, and they all broke in different ways. They don’t fit together the way they used to. Instead, all their jagged edges come up against each other, and cut and tear. They all pretend they don’t, but the wounds still rip open every time, if only because they remember that once it was all so different.

Or maybe…

Derek watches as Laura and Peter fight over the last bagel, tearing the bag and showering crumbs all over the couch, both of them immediately bickering about who has to clean up the mess.

Or maybe it’s just Derek who’s still broken.

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t always dream of the fire.

Sometimes he dreams of his life before that. He dreams of walking through the house, the light painting the floorboards gold, and he can hear his family all around him. Cora’s laugh. One of the twins squealing from upstairs. His mom yelling at Patrick to take his shoes off before he tracks mud through the kitchen. His dad humming along to some song on the radio, the keys on his keyboard clicking as he works.

And Derek walks through the house looking for them, but every room he checks is empty.

 

***

 

Boyd shifts from foot to foot, breathing on his cupped hands to keep them warm. It’s two in the morning, and tonight has been quiet. It probably won’t stay that way—it’s a dive, really—but it hasn’t been too bad yet. Derek doesn’t feel the cold like a human does, so he makes sure to stand between Boyd and the wind as much as he can.

“Forgot my jacket,” Boyd grumbles.

Derek shrugs his off.

“Derek. Man, really, you don’t have to—”

“Just put it on,” Derek says, and rolls his eyes.

Boyd’s too cold to refuse, he guesses.

The next night, Boyd turns up with a thermos of hot chocolate his girlfriend made.

“You have to have some,” he tells Derek, his mouth quirking in a smile that’s both pleased and a little embarrassed. “Erica made me promise to share.”

It’s been years since Derek had hot chocolate.

It reminds him of his mom’s.

 

***

 

Derek wakes up one afternoon to find that Laura’s been out and bought a throw rug and cushions for the couch.

“Like it?” she asks him, hands on her hips as she squints down at them. The cushions are a weird plum color. The throw rug is olive. Laura’s brows tug together. “Maybe I should have got the white throw. Do they clash? Peter’s going to be all snooty about it if they clash.”

Derek shrugs, fetches a glass of water, and climbs the stairs back to his room.

He can hear Laura muttering under her breath as he goes.

All of Derek’s possessions fit in a single gym bag. It’s been that way for years. Pack light and move fast. Derek’s been on the run for so long that he doesn’t know how _not_ to be. How the fuck do throw rugs and cushions fit into the world that he and Laura have lived in since the fire? How can she just decide that they’re done running, and suddenly they own cushions and throw rugs?

Because, if he’s honest with himself. Derek never thought a day like this would come.

He thought Laura was lying every time she talked about how they’d settle down one day. How they’d stop running. He thought she was just saying the things that an alpha and a big sister should. He’d thought she was lying to him to protect him from the truth: that the only way this would end would be by dying.

And isn’t that what he deserves, for what he did to his family? His pack?

Sometimes Derek doesn’t know if Kate intended for him to live or not. He thinks she probably did.

Because it’s so much more cruel this way.

  

***

 

Derek wasn’t with Laura when she first came back to Beacon Hills and met the crazy werewolf in the woods. Neither her nor Peter talk much about what happened, but Derek knows that Peter tried to kill her. He knows it was only luck that she dodged him long enough to give him a moment to come back to his senses.

“No,” Peter is saying hours later when Derek comes downstairs again. “The throw, I like. The cushions though?”

“They clash, right?”

“Not violently,” Peter says. “But they aren’t exactly pleasing to the eye.”

Derek shuffles past them to the refrigerator. He makes himself a protein shake, because he learned to live on them when they were on the run, and living in places with no refrigeration. Like the car. Protein shakes, crackers, and, if they had cash at the time, gas station food.

Laura hums thoughtfully. “I should have got the white throw.”

“No, you should have got some cream cushions and kept the olive throw,” Peter says. “In fact, you should still go and get some cream cushions, and get an armchair to put under that window. And you can put these cushions on the chair.”

Fuck if Derek knows how they made the leap from almost killing one another in the Preserve only a few months ago to this home decorator stuff, but it’s ridiculous. You don’t just go from running for your life to picking out cushions. You _don’t_.

What happens—

What happens if Kate finds them?

Derek’s grip loosens suddenly, he drops his plastic shaker, and his protein shake spills all over the kitchen floor.

“Derek?” Laura calls.

He doesn’t turn and look at her, already too aware that his sudden spike of panic must have been as loud as a blast of static to her and Peter. He pads over to the sink, grabs the cloth, and wets it.

“It’s fine,” he mutters, and bends down to clean the mess up. “I got it.”

He swipes the cloth over the floor, his face burning, and listens to the silence between Laura and Peter that tells him everything he needs to know.

They’re not broken anymore. Not like he is.

And if they don’t know what to say to him to make it better, then that must be because there’s nothing they _can_ say.

Maybe this is just how Derek is now.

Maybe this is what Kate made him.

 

***

  

The weeks pass. Derek goes to work, comes home, sleeps, rinse and repeat. His shifts sometimes end up in sync with Laura’s for a few days here and there, and they eat together and Laura tells him about her day, about her co-workers, about this one college kid who comes to the diner and pays his tips in nickels and dimes, and Derek nods and grunts to show he’s more or less listening.

“I think it’s time,” she says one night, her eyes bright with determination. “Time to start rebuilding the pack.”

Derek’s dinner tastes suddenly like ash.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles can still remember that Tuesday morning on his last week of high school. He can still remember sitting in chemistry, in the middle of an exam, when the principal appeared and pulled him out of class. He’d had his phone switched off because of the exam, and he hadn’t known how many calls he’d missed. He hadn’t known anything was wrong. But he’d known the second the principal had told him to come with him, to bring his backpack, and Parrish had been waiting in the corridor.

The rest of the day had been a blur. The rest of the week had.

He’d taken his make up test in the hospital cafeteria on Thursday, with Ms. Martin sitting quietly beside him.

Stiles doesn’t really know how he survived that week, but he knows that if he survived that, he can survive the next few months, right?

They’re not quite down to eating ramen by candlelight yet, but money is tight. And a part of Stiles thinks well, fuck money, because he’s got his dad still, right? And philosophically, sure, that’s great, but a healthy attitude doesn’t stop the bills from piling up.

“Where did you say this food came from?” Dad asks one morning, easing himself into his chair at the kitchen table and resting his crutches against the wall. He looks like he hasn’t slept much. His face is pinched with pain. Stiles is so used to seeing that tight expression, those lines on his forehead and furrows around his corners of his mouth, that he’s almost forgotten what Dad looks like without it.

“The diner,” Stiles tells him.

“You’re giving me a meatball sub for breakfast?” Dad narrows his eyes. “Is it my birthday?”

“Hey, if you don’t want it,” Stiles begins, and Dad snatches it away before he can take it back. “It’s only a few hours old, so it’s still good.”

“A few hours? What time were you there until?”

“About three,” Stiles says. “I told you, I wash some dishes, get some extra cash, plus free food!”

Dad sighs.

“It’s a sweet deal,” Stiles says, his tone more defensive than he intends.

Dad presses his mouth into a thin line for a moment before he speaks. “Haven’t you got class today?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Kiddo,” Dad says, and sighs again.

“Daaad,” Stiles teases, and rolls his eyes. “It’s fine. Do you need anything before I head out?”

“I’m good,” Dad says, and Stiles checks to make sure his phone is in easy reach just in case. It takes him ages to get up and down the stairs if he’s left anything up there.

“You’ve got rehab today, right?”

“Yeah,” Dad says. “Melissa is giving me a ride.”

“If you need anything…”

“I know,” Dad says, waving him away, all fond exasperation. “Go on, get out of here.”

Stiles grabs his backpack and goes.

 

***

 

It takes over an hour to get to the community college by bus, which is ridiculous in a town the size of Beacon Hills, but it gives Stiles a chance to doze that he might not otherwise get. He still wants to get that new starter motor for the Jeep though, because being without a car is a pain in the ass. And Dad hasn’t even got the cruiser. As far as Stiles knows, it’s under a tarp at the station, waiting for him to get back to work. 

It’s been a long eight months. Dad was in hospital for five weeks after he got shot, after surgery to remove a bullet from his abdomen, and he’s been back twice since—the first time for a knee replacement since a second bullet had shattered his knee, and the second time for a staph infection he got during that bout of surgery. Stiles still can’t believe that, when it came down to it, it was the abdominal surgery that was the walk in the park and the knee surgery that really fucked his dad up.

Well, never let it be said that a Stilinski does things the expected way, right?

Stiles dozes off with his head against the window of the bus, and jolts awake again with the bus driver calls his name at his stop.

“Thanks, man,” Stiles tells the driver.

The driver fist bumps him, and Stiles steps down onto the street.

School is boring as fuck. Stiles really hates accounting. So does everyone else in Beacon Hills, apparently, because when it came to scrambling for a last minute placement at community college, it was about the only course he qualified for that still had openings. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that, but a part of Stiles is still bitter that he’s not at GWU. He had plans, okay? And no fucking way did accounting come into them. Stiles is no masochist.

Classes drag, like always. The only one of them Stiles actually enjoys is his English lit requirement: Stiles did AP English in high school, so the material isn’t even new to him, but he likes his teacher a lot. She’s about six hundred years old and has a wicked sense of humor. She also gives out candy to keep the class engaged, and Stiles will sometimes grab a handful and skip lunch.

In the afternoon, Stiles takes the bus home again. He doesn’t fall asleep this time. Instead, he does as much of his assigned reading as he can, and makes it home in time to start dinner. Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, going through paperwork. Stiles dumps his backpack and grabs a glass of water.

“God,” he says, catching a glimpse of the insurance company’s logo on the letterhead. “Don’t tell me they’re still arguing about the co-pay for the anaesthetist’s bill?”

“No.” Dad sets the letter down. “This time they’re arguing that they don’t have to pay for the ICU after my staph infection because my knee replacement was a pre-existing condition.”

“Oh, fuck those guys,” Stiles says. “Seriously?”

He’s too tired to be really livid about it, and thinks, yeah, that’s how they get you. They just wear people down and hope that they give up. Stiles is worn down, but he’s a long way from giving up. He knows they can wait this out. Dad just needs the money from his workplace insurance from the county to come through. The dumb thing is, it’s the same insurance company his dad has his health insurance though too, so the entire thing could be sorted out in-house, but that would make too much sense, apparently.

“Yeah,” Dad says with a grimace. “Fuck those guys.”

Stiles chugs his water and sets the glass down in the sink. “How did rehab go?”

Dad usually gets testy after his weekly rehab sessions, because he’s in more pain than usual and he hates taking meds for it. Things weren’t good after Stiles’s mom died, and his dad climbed inside a bottle for a while there. Stiles thinks he’s scared that the same thing might happen with pills, if he lets it.

“Not great,” Dad says, and Stiles is horrified to see his eyes watering. “Apparently my patella has dislocated, so I’m starting at scratch again with my rehab.” His voice hitches, and he clears his throat. “I’m looking at least another four months off work. Maybe more if I need more surgery.”

Stiles’s mouth feels suddenly dry, but he keeps his expression neutral. “Oh. Okay.”

“Okay?” Dad echoes. He rubs a hand across his eyes. “We’re on our second notice from the electric company already.”

“Then we’ll have a garage sale or something,” Stiles says, sucking in a deep breath. “We’ll figure something out. Look, we just have to keep afloat until the money comes through from the county, right?”

“Right,” Dad mutters, as though they haven’t had this exact conversation a hundred times before He looks as tired as Stiles feels.

Stiles forces a grin. “Time to find myself a sugar daddy!”

Dad stares at him, stony-faced, before he cracks what looks to be an unwilling smile. “I don’t even know if you’re kidding or not. Please be kidding. Because there is no way I would be okay with that.”

Stiles shows him the palms of his hands. “Hey, I’m just saying that if Chris Hemsworth wanted to pay me money to do dirty things with him, I wouldn’t kick him out the door.”

“Hmm,” Dad says. “Well, I guess I’d make an exception for Chris Hemsworth too.”

“For me or for you?” Stiles teases.

Dad snorts out a laugh. “Wouldn’t you like to know, kid?” 

 

***

 

It’s almost midnight when Stiles makes it to Betty’s Diner. Betty’s is a Beacon Hills landmark. It’s been here since the 1940s and hadn’t changed its décor since the early eighties. It doesn’t even look charmingly retro—it just looks tired. But the food is good, and cheap, and it serves the best curly fries known to mankind. Stiles used to come here to get away from the house, in an attempt to stop thinking about bills and money and insurance for at least a few hours while he studied, but now he comes here mostly to visit Laura and hang out. And the twenty bucks he makes a night for washing dishes is pretty fucking nice too.

Laura waves at him when he arrives, busy taking an order for a young couple sitting together in a booth. Stiles waves back and heads for the kitchen.

The dishes have stacked up during the evening. There’s a mountain of them waiting, but Stiles doesn’t mind. He kinds of likes the repetitive work. Scrubbing the dishes clean and then loading them into the big industrial washer is a great way of working some of his frustrations out. Laura doesn’t care if he calls crusted-on mashed potato a motherfucker.

He finishes loading up the dishwasher, and then escapes the kitchen and goes into the restaurant. He slumps in a booth, groans, and rests his head on his arms. He might even fall asleep for a moment, because it seems to take Laura no time at all before she’s sliding a plate of curly fries toward him, along with a strawberry milkshake, because she knows those are his favorite.

She sits down opposite him. She looks more serious than usual.

“Hey,” Stiles says.

Laura peers at him critically. “You look like a panda.”

“Rude,” he mutters. Okay, so the bags under his eyes have bags, but she doesn’t have to point it out like that.

“Are you okay?” she asks him.

Stiles reaches for his milkshake, and takes a sip, and shrugs, because where can he even start?

Dad’s knee is still fucked, and they could have really used some good news about that today instead of more of the same. Last week Stiles caught him looking up Mom’s fancy dinner setting online to see what it was worth. Just… Stiles knows that so many people have it worse of than them right now, but what sort of fucking world is it when a guy like John Stilinski, who hardly took a sick day in over twenty years, has to think about selling his dead wife’s stuff to make ends meet?

“Oh,” he says instead. “I’m fine. Same same, you know?”

Laura nods, her mouth pulled down in sympathy. She reaches over and puts her hands over his. “Stiles, how much do you need?”

“What?” He blinks at her.

“How much money do you need?”

“God, I don’t know. Five thousand? Six? More?”

Laura’s eyes seem to shine suddenly. “How about eight?”

“I can’t...” Stiles isn’t sure if they’re just spit-balling here, or if Laura Hale is actually offering him money. “I would never be able to pay that back.”

Laura nods seriously. “But what if you didn’t have to?”

“What?” Stiles wrinkles his nose. “Why would you just give me eight thousand dollars?”

And, looking more nervous than Stiles has ever seen her look, Laura draws a deep breath and tells him.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t sleep that night.

He lies awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.

This is the craziest fucking thing he’s ever heard. This is even crazier than the thought of Chris Hemsworth appearing on Stiles’s doorstep with his charming smile and a blank check. Because Laura Hale wants his sperm. And okay, it’s not like Stiles has ever done anything with it that doesn’t involve copious Kleenex and a sad ending in his trashcan, so it’s not like he has any real use for it, but this is crazy, right?

It’s  _crazy_.

Laura Hale wants a baby, and she wants Stiles to supply half its DNA.

Laura will supply the turkey baster.

It’s  _crazy_.

But it’s also eight thousand dollars, and Stiles won’t have to do anything except, well, what comes totally naturally to him. Laura doesn’t want child support. She doesn’t even want his name on the birth certificate. And she’s going to get a lawyer to sign off on it all.

If Stiles does this, then he’s not messing up his future or anything, right?

It won’t be his baby.

It’s just… it’s just getting paid to help out a friend, right?

Not that Stiles is going to do it.

He tosses and turns for a while, but he can’t sleep.

No, he’s not going to do it.

It’s insane, isn’t it?

It’s totally insane.

And Stiles is insane for even thinking about it.

As the night fades slowly into dawn, Stiles hears the tap-scrape of his dad working his way painstakingly from his bedroom to the bathroom, every step punctuated by a grunt, and Stiles feels a rush of guilt. Because he can’t make his dad heal faster, but maybe he can at least give him one less fucking thing to worry about in the meantime.

He reaches for his phone, and texts Laura before he can change his mind: _I’ll do it. Call your lawyer._

 


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m sorry?” Peter says, and blinks once, and then twice. “You need eight thousand dollars for _what_  now?”

Laura sets her beer down on his coffee table, and he doesn’t even complain that she’s not using a coaster. “To buy semen.”

Peter hold up his finger for a moment, and then consults his phone. He taps away at it for a moment, before looking up again. “Semen doesn’t cost that much.”

“That’s your problem with this?” Laura asks curiously. “The price?”

“That’s the problem I have as your left hand,” Peter says. “It’s my job to make sure you’re not getting cheated. I haven’t even got started yet on the problems I have with this as your _uncle_.”

“That’s fair.” Laura inclines her head in a brief nod. “And, as your alpha, I’m telling you that it’s time to rebuild the pack.”

“I agree,” Peter says, his sharp blue gaze fixed on her. “And as your uncle, I’d tell you there are ways to do it that don’t involve paying some stranger for semen.”

“He’s a friend,” Laura says. “We have the money, and he needs the money.”

“A friend?” Peter presses. “Does he know about us?”

“No.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “ _Will_ he know about us?”

“No.” Laura resists the urge to flash her eyes at him. Her mother always used to say that a good left hand challenged their alpha, and Peter is nothing but challenging. And better that it comes from him than from anyone else. Peter’s jabs will make sure that Laura knows she can defend her position. “And he won’t.”

“And what if the baby is a werewolf?” Peter asks curiously.

“He won’t know that,” Laura tells him. “If we do this, he’ll sign away all his parental rights.”

Peter’s silent for a long while before he speaks again. “I’d almost prefer it was a stranger, then. Less messy. You realise your friendship might not survive this?”

Laura ignores the flutter of anxiety in her stomach. She likes Stiles, and she doesn’t want to lose contact with him, but she’s realistic enough to know that it might be too weird, for both of them, to have him hanging around when she has the baby.

“Why not a stranger?” Peter asks.

“I don’t know.” Laura shakes her head slightly. “I just really like his scent. It reminds me of all the things I miss about growing up. It’s weird, but he smells a little like pack.”

Peter tilts his head. “Then why are you paying him and not seducing him?”

“Ew! No!” Laura picks up her beer and takes another swig. “He’s like a little brother, not a…” She tries to imagine it—Stiles naked—and her brain just refuses. She snorts. “Not a _mate_.  No, that would be too weird.”

Peter leans back in his chair. “And speaking of little brothers…”

Laura’s heart sinks.

Peter raises his eyebrows. “Derek’s not going to take this well.”

“Derek doesn’t take anything well,” Laura murmurs. There’s no heat behind the words, only the customary ache she feels in her chest when it comes to her brother and beta. “But it’s time to rebuild the pack, Peter. You’ve said that yourself. And I really think this is the best way. Sometimes I look at him and I think he’s almost an omega. I couldn’t add an adult to the pack, not without him feeling like he was being pushed aside for a new beta. It’s got to be a pup, Peter, not a beta.”

Peter is silent again, staring off into the middle distance. He’s quieter than he was before the fire and the coma, and Laura isn’t sure if that’s because of the trauma he’s suffered, or if it’s just because his relationship with her is different than the one he had with her mother. As Talia’s left hand, Peter had been fiery, sharp, and quick to judgement. With Laura he is slower and quieter, and she sometimes thinks that’s for her benefit. That he’s being patient with her, and letting her find her feet as his alpha. A part of her—the alpha—thinks it should rankle. But the rest of her remembers all the times Uncle Peter helped her climb up high, or held her hand so she didn’t stumble, or carried her piggyback so she didn’t get left behind.

And it’s hard, sometimes, to be both his alpha and his niece. It’s a balancing act she’s not sure she’s got the hang of yet.

There’s the betrayal too, and sometimes it still lies heavily between them.

Laura left him, and he went mad with pain and grief and loneliness, and if she hadn’t stepped back quickly enough that night in the Preserve, he would have killed her.

Peter exhales slowly, and leans forward again. “I think you’re right about bringing a baby into the pack instead of an adult. I also think you should reconsider whether or not you want to risk losing your friendship with this boy.” He inclines his head. “But you’re the alpha, and if you decide to do this, then I’ll support your decision.”

Laura understands his reticence. She knows there’s a good chance this will mess up her friendship with Stiles. The dumb irony of it is, though, that if Stiles wasn’t the kind of guy who’d get emotionally invested then she wouldn’t want his baby anyway. But his scent… there’s something so _right_  about it. Her instincts are telling her that this is what she needs, what the _pack_  needs.

She holds Peter’s gaze. “I’m doing it,” she tells him firmly.

He nods, his expression softening. “Then I’ll arrange to have the money made available.”

 

 

***

 

Derek gets in from work at dawn, and Laura lays awake and listens to him climb the steps. Then she hears the snick of his bedroom door, the rustle of clothing, and the creak of his mattress as he climbs into bed.

She sometimes feels as though he’s as much of a ghost as her siblings that died in the fire. They inhabit the same spaces, but Derek just drifts through them, doesn’t he?

Laura’s tried to talk to him before, but it’s as though she just can’t connect with him anymore. As though she reaches and she reaches, but her fingers pass right through him. She doesn’t know what to do to bring him back when he won’t talk and he flinches away from physical contact.

She doesn’t know how to stop him from fading away.

 

 

***

 

 

Peter is nothing if not thorough. Two nights later, when Derek’s at work, he turns up at the loft with eight thousand dollars in cash in a Hello Kitty backpack.

Laura blinks at it, but no, it still doesn’t make any sense.

“Briefcases are so cliché,” Peter tells her with his customary smirk. “Now, I know this is something you want to do for your friend, but you’re not going to pay if he’s shooting blanks, I hope.”

“I didn’t really consider that.”

“Well, you should,” Peter says. “So I would suggest you offer him a few hundred up front, and the rest if it takes. I also spoke to a lawyer friend of mine and he’s emailing me a contract that should cover everything you need, up to and including what happens in the event that you, me and Derek all die and leave the child with no other family.”

A chill runs down Laura’s spine, and she wishes that scenario didn’t seem quite so possible. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Of course not,” Peter says. “But if it did, you need to think about who you would want the child to go to. The father?”

“I don’t know.” Laura rubs her chest to ease the sudden tightness there. “I don’t know?”

“Then think about it,” Peter says softly. “You plan for the worst and hope for the best, Lulu.”

God. He hasn’t called her that since she was still wearing pigtails.

“I still have Satomi Ito’s number somewhere,” Peter continues. “You probably don’t remember her very well, but I think you met her a few times. She’d certainly be at the top of my list when it comes to guardianship, since you can’t really just drop a child who is likely to be born a werewolf into the system, or into his biological father’s human family.”

Peter has a point.

And he’s not talking about some car accident or something in this scenario, is he? If the worst was to happen then it would be because of hunters, and the baby would be safer in an established pack than with Stiles and his invalid father.

“I remember Satomi,” Laura says softly. “Should I contact her or…”

“I’ll take care of it,” Peter says.

“Thank you.”

“It’s my job,” Peter says, his mouth quirking with the hint of what might even be a genuine smile. “Alpha.”

 

***

 

 

Laura falls asleep on the couch, the plum-colored cushions jammed under her head and the not-quite-clashing olive throw rug pulled over her. She wakes up when she hears the loft door slide open with a screech, and blinks in the gray, washed-out light of an overcast dawn.

Derek closes the door again, and moves into the kitchen. The loft is open plan downstairs, so Laura can see him. He’s illuminated for a moment in the light from the refrigerator—the sharp angles of his face, his stubble, his green eyes that are all the colors of the Preserve at once—and then he grabs a soda and closes the refrigerator door again. The kitchen is plunged back into gloom.

He leans against the sink to drink his soda, all tense broad shoulders and leather jacket, and Laura wonders what happened to her little brother who was so loose-limbed and quick to smile.

She remembers how good he was with Cora and the twins when they were small. Remembers how he’d let them crawl all over him, and how he’d blow raspberries on their tummies as they shrieked with laughter. How he was the one who liked to watch the babies get their baths, or have their diapers changed. How he’d forestall any tears by shaking rattles for them, and tickling toes. Laura, when she was a kid, was always bored with babies. They didn’t _do_  anything. Derek was a nurturer.

She wonders if Derek will remember how to be like that with a new baby in the pack.

“How was work?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper in the dawn.

“Good.” His usual monotone.

He rolls his shoulders, puts his soda can in the trash, and climbs the stairs to his room.

 

***

 

The bells on the door jangle as Stiles steps inside the diner, tugging his plaid shirt around him as the wind attempts to dislodge it. There’s a leaf stuck in his hair.

He sidles up to the counter, and sits on one of the stools. Spins back and forth on it for a moment.

“Hey,” Laura says, when she’s cleared the customer waiting for a takeout coffee.

He smells like sour anxiety and adrenaline. His face is pinched pink from more than the wind outside. “So, um, have you got that contract for me?”

Laura fetches it from under the counter and sets it down in front of him.

It’s only two pages, and it’s written in easy-to-understand language. No fine print or disclaimers or legal jargon to confuse them with. Stiles reads it slowly and silently, chewing his bottom lip as he does.

Laura pretends not to watch him as she sweeps a cloth over the counter, swiping crumbs away.

Stiles looks up. “Full disclosure. I have ADHD. Also, my mom died of frontotemporal dementia, and my dad was, um…” He clears his throat. “He drank too much for a while. Like, genetically, I’m not exactly a prize.”

“It’s fine,” Laura tells him. “None of that is a deal breaker to me, Stiles.”

She’s a werewolf. It’s likely her baby will be a werewolf too. And even if it isn’t… Stiles is smart and cute and funny and he smells like home. Her wolf is drawn to him, and Laura hasn’t felt so certain of anything in a very long time.

Stiles nods. “This is going to change things between us, isn’t it?”

Laura’s heart sinks. “Probably.”

“Like, you won’t want me washing dishes here anymore?”

“The point of the money is so you don’t have to do that,” Laura tells him. “You can actually get more than five hours sleep a night.”

“Right,” Stiles says, and his throat clicks as he swallows. “Right. I can still study here though, right?”

“Yes.” Laura can barely breathe as she watches him pull a pen out of his backpack.

“Hey, Harold,” Stiles calls to the old drunk in the corner booth. “Want to be our witness?”

Laura’s heart swells.

 

***

 

 _Mieczyslaw Stilinski_.

Hours later, when the diner is empty and even old Harold has left to stagger home, Laura stares at the signature scrawled on the bottom of the contract, tears stinging her eyes, and wonders if he even knows what a gift he is giving her.


	5. Chapter 5

Derek rarely goes anywhere apart from the loft to work, and then back again. But it’s 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and he and Boyd have had a shit of a night. Some bucks party had decided to come slumming at the club, and the regulars hadn’t taken too kindly to the guys’ entitled attitudes. Neither had Derek. He and Boyd had broken up more fights last night than in the past month put together, and there’s enough adrenaline still coursing though Derek’s system that he knows he won’t be able to sleep for a while yet anyway.

He turns the collar of his jacket up against the wind, jams his hands into his pockets, and begins the walk to Betty’s Diner. Laura is on until six, he thinks. He can buy a cup of coffee and then get a lift home with her.

It’s a twenty minute walk, and Derek takes it slowly. There isn’t much traffic out at this hour. A police cruiser rolls past Derek at one point, but doesn’t stop. There’s still music pumping out of the Jungle when Derek passes, and people chatting—or making out—in the parking lot, and the atmosphere seems a lot friendlier than at the club where Derek works. Derek worked the bar at a gay club back in New York for a few weeks, and he’d hated it. The tips were great, but he got tired of the flirting. Derek hates conversation at the best of times. He really hates it when it’s loaded with innuendo and expectation. It reminds him of Kate, and makes his skin crawl.

A stray cat shadows Derek part of the way.

When he reaches the diner, there’s only one customer. A deputy in a tan uniform sitting in a booth with a cup of black coffee in front of him. He looks up and nods as Derek walks past him to the counter, then goes back to writing something in his notebook.

“Der!” Laura exclaims, bouncing out from the kitchen with a huge smile on her face. There’s an expectation in that smile too, and Derek fights not to cringe away from it. The person that Laura wants him to be… he’s not that person anymore. Maybe he never was. He’ll just disappoint her in the end, but it’s like she hasn’t realised that yet. “How was your shift?”

“Okay,” he says, and sits down at the counter. There’s a faint scent in the air that catches his attention for a moment, the trace of something sweet and warm, but when Derek inhales more deeply to find it, he can’t get a fix on it.

“Coffee?” Laura asks him, and then leans forward and lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Or a chocolate thickshake?”

“Just coffee.”

Her smile dims slightly, and Derek feels the urge to apologise. To his sister, to his alpha, for not getting even this simple thing right.

“Do you—” he blurts out, and then stops when the words stick in his throat. He tries again. “Do you remember when Dad used to take us out for thickshakes?”

“Yeah,” Laura says, her eyes shining with sudden tears. She seizes on his words as though he’s thrown her a lifeline, and he hates that he has that power over her. He doesn’t want it. He shouldn’t be granted it. But now she’s smiling at him, even while she’s blinking away tears, as though this moment _means_ something. As though Derek does. “I remember you always got chocolate! Every single time!”

 _Because it’s the best_ , Derek wants to say, but it hurts too much to think of those times.

Laura liked to get a different flavor every week. Cora’s favorite was banana, and so was Evie’s, and Patrick… Patrick once drank his too fast and then vomited caramel thickshake all through the car on the drive back home. Nobody was keen on caramel for a while after that.

Derek looks down, tracing his finger over a chip in the laminate counter.

It’s his fault. It’s all his fault, and if Laura and Peter knew, they’d never forgive him.

He waits, a buzzing sound inside his skull, for whatever Laura’s going to say next. He can’t talk about the family that he’s lost. He can’t, and he doesn’t know how he’ll hold himself together if Laura brings them up.

Some dumb story about thickshakes and Saturday morning outings with their dad, and Derek will shatter. He knows he will.

Laura is quiet for a long time.

“I’ll get you your coffee,” she says at last, and Derek nods, grateful, and feels like he can breathe again.

 

***

 

The following week brings more throw rugs and cushions to the loft, and a thick comforter for each of their beds because, as Laura says, nights are getting colder. New cutlery appears in the kitchen drawer, and a bookshelf arrives. The next day there’s a small cactus in a yellow pot sitting on the top of the bookshelf. No books yet though.

The mildewed shower curtain in the bathroom is replaced with a new one.

All these tiny little signs that this is _real_ , that Laura intends on staying here, that they’ve stopped running.

And it terrifies Derek, because he doesn’t know how to stop running.

And because he knows that Kate will never stop hunting them.

 

***

 

The bright light of the full moon filters through the windows of the loft, and Derek feels the call of it in his blood, his bones, and in the aching need to shift and run and howl. He paces back and forth in front of the window, listening to Peter and Laura in the kitchen, because this is what they do now—make pizzas and watch movies instead of running in the Preserve. Sometimes, in New York and when they were on the road, Derek and Laura didn’t get the chance to run during the full moon either. They’re used to it. And Peter, in his coma, learned even better than they did how to pass a full moon without running wild under its watchful eye.

It’s not necessary to go into the Preserve during the full moon, but it was a Hale pack tradition, and now that they’re back in Beacon Hills, now that the Preserve is within reach again, it makes Derek’s skin itch not to be there. Or perhaps it makes the wolf’s skin itch—the human recoils from the thought of running through the ashes of his old life. The wolf feels like he is being unfairly denied, and rattles a little at its cage of flesh and bone and skin. The human though…

The human can’t bring himself to enter the Preserve. Not when he can already see the ghosts from here.

“Alright, pup?” Peter asks quietly.

Derek starts. He hadn’t realised Peter had joined him by the windows. He wishes he could blame the pull of the moon for his inattention, but it’s not true. His guilt and grief have redoubled since his return to Beacon Hills, and they’re swamping all his senses. He feels like he’s drowning most days, except for those couple of shifts a week when he stands next to Boyd at the door the club, and can feel the ground beneath his feet. It’s an easy job, and Boyd is easy company, and Derek doesn’t feel like every step he takes is somehow going to be a misstep, the way he feels around his own pack.

He jerks his chin sharply in a nod. “Fine.”

Peter looks at him intently for a moment, as though Derek is a puzzle he’s on the brink of solving. Then his mouth quirks in a faint smile. “Your heart doesn’t even skip a beat when you say that, nephew.”

Derek stares at him, unsure how to respond.

“They made me do therapy before they released me from the hospital, did I tell you that?” Peter rolls his eyes. “I hated every moment of it, of course, but I did learn a few things. Did you know that depression literally changes a person’s brain chemistry? It’s a measurable phenomena. In humans, at least. For us... well I sometimes wonder though, don’t you?”

Derek presses his mouth closed in a thin line.

Peter holds his right hand up to the moonlight, claws appearing. Then he taps his index finger against the palm of his left hand and, abruptly, drags his claw along it, opening up a narrow wound. Blood wells, and Peter wipes it on his shirt. The wound in his palm knits and heals in moment, as thought it had never existed at all.

“I sometimes wonder,” Peter continues, “if just because we can see that our skin and bones can do that, we fail to give any consideration as to whether or not our brains can do the same.”

Derek narrows his eyes. “I’m fine.”

Peter reaches out and puts his hand over Derek’s heart, and Derek fights not to flinch away from the undeserved touch of his packmate. “Oh, now there it is. The blip. Say it again, pup. Tell me you’re fine.”

Derek opens his mouth, but the words won’t come. He steps back instead, batting Peter’s hand away. “Stop it.”

There’s a stinging edge to Peter’s compassion, a barbed challenge, and there always has been. Tonight it feels sharp enough to draw blood. Peter doesn’t offer comfort. That’s not who he is. As a child, Derek learned very early not to run to Peter if he wanted hugs and soft kisses. Peter has never been the sort of person who soothes a hurt with kindness. Peter would rather take a knife and cut it out. Derek never ran to Peter looking for sympathy. Derek ran to him looking for revenge against those who hurt him.

Sometimes that meant Laura, who broke his toy. Sometimes it meant a kid in class who knocked him over. Small hurts, healed by petty acts of revenge. Peter gives the injured party power, not solace.

But this… this is no small hurt. This is the loss of their pack, their _family_ , and what is Derek’s hurt worth anyway, when Peter and Laura suffered just as much, but did nothing at all to deserve it?

Derek wonders what would happen if he told Peter the truth about his hurt. About his _guilt_. He wonders if Peter would really be the left hand then. He wonders if he’d flash his claws again, and they’d be the last thing Derek saw, the last thing he felt, slicing his throat open.

He wouldn’t step back, he thinks.

It’s his fault.

“Derek,” Peter says quietly, and there’s such a soft expression on his face. He holds out his hand.

“Stop it,” Derek says again, and turns and walks away.

 

***

 

He’d loved Kate. That was the worst of it.

Even when the fire happened, he didn’t think it was her. It took days of her not answering his calls before that realization. Days before she finally picked up, laughing, and said, “Aw, sweetie, you really aren’t very clever, are you?”

A sudden cold chill, and the phone shaking in his grasp. “K-Kate?”

“I killed them all, Derek. I put them down like the dogs they were. And don’t worry, baby.” False sympathy dripped from her voice like poison. “You won’t have to be sad forever. I’ll get you and your bitch of a sister one day.”

 

***

  

Some nights Laura sits on the stairs of the fire escape and smokes cigarettes. Derek doesn’t know where she picked up the taste for them. He hates the smell of smoke these days, even wood smoke from a fireplace. He hates the way she keeps a lighter and cigarettes on top of the refrigerator.

One afternoon he comes downstairs and they’re not there anymore. He spies them in the trash can instead.

It feels like another tiny yet momentous thing, just like the throw rugs and the shower curtain. Laura is moving on. She’s reinventing herself. She’s making a home, and she’s ditching her bad habits. She’s taking steps towards her future self, when Derek is standing still.

All such little things, but he knows what it means: if he can’t find a way to move forward too, Laura will leave him behind.


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles checks his phone for Laura’s address. It’s on Lincoln Street, down in the old industrial area of town. It takes two different bus rides to get there, but it’s a Saturday, so it’s not like Stiles has any other plans. And Laura’s going to give him two hundred dollars upfront, whether it takes or not, so at least he'll have some cash after this, right?

Surely the thought of that should be enough to overcome any performance anxiety?

Not that Stiles has ever jerked off thinking about his Jeep. Although, if he’s honest with himself, he has jerked off thinking about messing around with other people in the back of his Jeep, so it’s a starting point, right?

He wipes his clammy hands on his shirt, rechecks the address, and begins the long climb up the stairs.

Laura said her place was a bit out of the way, and mentioned it was a semi-converted loft, but Stiles is getting all sorts of horror movie vibes. Like, is this really the kind of place to bring up a kid?

But when Laura opens the door to him when he knocks, it’s actually not that bad. The loft has a kind of industrial-chic thing happening, and the concrete and brick look is kind of cool when it’s been offset by a few of the soft furnishings around the place.

“It’s a work in progress,” Laura says, gesturing at him to come inside. “Derek and I don’t exactly have an eye for decorating.”

Right. Her brother. Laura’s mentioned him once or twice, but Stiles hasn’t pushed. He’s Laura’s friend. If she wants to talk about her family, she will. If she doesn’t, she won’t. And Stiles likes her too much to rip those scabs off. He’s got scars of his own; he knows how it feels. But he casts his gaze around the loft for the elusive and mysterious Derek anyway.

“He’s sleeping,” Laura tells him. “He worked last night.”

“So you’re both night owls?”

“More or less.” Laura looks different at home than she does at the diner. She’s barefoot, wearing jeans and a baggy t-shirt, and her dark hair is loose instead of being pulled back in a ponytail.

“Cool,” Stiles says, just for something to attempt to cover his rising anxiety, and then winces internally at how lame he sounds. He gestures to the stairs. “So, um, is the bathroom that way?”

Laura nods. “Yeah. First door on the left. Do you, um, need anything?”

Stiles is so, so glad she didn’t ask if he needed a hand. Because okay, that would have been hilarious, but he’s really not ready to laugh at this yet. It’s way too fucking awkward.

“Nah.” He likewise resists the urge to tell her he’s an expert. “I’ll go and ah… do the thing.”

Laura nods, holding her hands in front of herself and twisting her fingers. She looks as weirded out and nervous as Stiles feels right now.

Stiles climbs the steps, his face burning.

He finds the bathroom easily enough. It’s old, but it’s clean. The shower curtain has sharks on it, and how weird would it be if he asked Laura where she got it? He’ll have money soon, right? He can splurge on a new shower curtain.

There’s a glass jar on the sink, the lid left off.

Stiles looks at it for a moment, and then looks at his pale face in the mirror, and then pops the button on the fly of his khakis and tugs the zip down.

Right.

He can do this.

He’s been doing this since he was twelve.

He’s a freaking _expert_.

Stiles closes his eyes, screws up his face, and tries his hardest not to think about the fact that, downstairs, Laura knows exactly what he’s doing.

 

***

 

Stiles steers clear of Laura for about a week after The Event. Mostly because he has no idea what the hell to say to her ever since he awkwardly handed her a jar of cum and then fled. He tries to get back into a routine. He goes to his classes, and spends most of his evenings at home with Dad.

“You’re not washing dishes anymore?” Dad asks him one night as they sit at the kitchen table eating dinner. It’s leftover meatloaf and vegetables. Stiles is looking forward to buying his dad a steak at some point soon. It’s been so long that he’s prepared to relax his restrictions on red meat. 

“Nah,” Stiles says. “I got a little extra cash coming in.”

“Oh,” Dad says, in a neutral tone that Stiles doesn’t trust for a moment. “Doing what?”

“Tutoring one of the kids at school,” Stiles says, and jams a forkful of pasta in his mouth in what turns out to be a vain attempt to discourage further conversation.

“Tutoring,” Dad says, narrowing his eyes. “You’re not selling papers again, are you?”

That had got Stiles into a fair amount of shit in sophomore year at high school. But only because Greenberg was a fucking idiot and had complained to their Bio teacher that he should have gotten an A on his paper ‘because Stiles wrote it!’ Even though Stiles had specifically written a C paper so nobody would get suspicious. He’d even misspelled ‘organism’ as ‘orgasm’ three times, because that was a totally Greenberg thing to do. Stiles still isn’t sure if Greenberg really was that stupid, or if he just thought he was funny. Point is, Stiles got into a _lot_ of shit over that.

“No, I’m tutoring,” Stiles lies.

“For what? Your accounting classes?” Dad is still suspicious. “You don’t even like your accounting classes.”

And hasn’t that been a bone of contention between them? Dad didn’t want Stiles to give up going to GWU, but Stiles knows he made the right decision coming back, because Dad isn’t up to looking after himself yet, and hiring someone is still out of their budget. But in the end Dad had agreed that Stiles could stick around—if only because GWU was suddenly out of their budget as well. Stiles had got a few scholarships, but Dad’s savings had been going to cover the gap, right up until Dad’s savings were swallowed up on hospital bills. But Dad had been adamant he didn’t want Stiles to give up on college altogether—probably suspecting that if Stiles skipped a year, he’d never get around to going back—so Stiles pretended to be super-excited about accounting at Beacon Hills Community College.

Dad saw straight through him of course, but they both kept the pretence up. Dad was already guilty enough about getting hurt and derailing Stiles’s plans to go to GWU, and they were both dealing with enough other shit without Stiles whining about how much he hated accounting.

Anyway, he can change courses next year, right? Change colleges too, if the damn insurance money ever comes through. He probably won’t change colleges though. After almost losing his dad, he wants to stick close.

“Not always,” he concedes now. “But I’m good at them. Anyway, I don’t need to go back to washing dishes is my point. More early nights for me!”

“Well, that’s good, kiddo.” Dad sounds genuinely pleased.

“Right?” Stiles grins, and tries to ignore the twist of anxiety in his gut. Because it’s going ot be weird, right? If Laura is pregnant. It’s going to be weird stopping in at the diner to study and seeing her with a bulging belly under her apron, and knowing that it’s his. Sort of his. Not _legally_ his, but just because he’s already signed over his rights, that doesn’t mean he signed over his feelings too, right?

This is all maybe messier than he thought it would be.

He likes Laura. He wants to stay friends with her. Can he do that, when she’s having a kid he knows is his?

This is probably shit he should have thought of before he jerked off into a jar in her bathroom.

“You okay, son?” Dad asks him.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, stabbing another piece of pasta. “I am totally awesomely amazing!”

Dad isn’t fooled for a second. “Anything I need to know about?”

“No. It’s cool, Dad, I promise. Just… school stuff.”

“School stuff,” Dad echoes, like he knows it’s a total lie.

“School stuff,” Stiles repeats firmly. He stands up, grabs Dad’s empty glass, and goes to the refrigerator to pour him another juice.

It seems safer, somehow, not to look him in the eye right now.

 

***

 

Stiles clears his browser history just in case his dad decides to check it and discovers his most recent search is “How long does it take to know if you’re pregnant”.

 

***

 

Laura gave Stiles two hundred dollars as an upfront payment, and he keeps twenty back for groceries and puts the rest on the electric bill. It’s weird to think that in a few weeks he might have eight thousand dollars—minus his two hundred dollar advance. He can get his Jeep fixed, pay off the rest of the bills, and dedicate his spare time to phoning the insurance company and yelling at them. It might not get them to process Dad’s claim any faster, but at least it’ll be somewhat cathartic. 

So the money will be great. Weird, but great.

Even weirder than the thought of that much money is the thought that Laura might be pregnant.

Laura is awesome. She’ll be a great mom. And obviously she’s got the money to raise a kid if she can afford to pay Stiles eight grand for his contribution. But he worries that maybe he should have asked more questions. Like why him? Laura’s young, and she’s pretty hot, and she’s funny as hell, and seems like an all-round great person. So why did she want a sperm donor? She should have eligible guys lined up around the block for a chance to ask her on a date.

Maybe she’s been in shitty relationships before and she doesn’t want to date right now.

Maybe she’s a lesbian. Or maybe she’s ace and she doesn’t want to have sex with anyone.

Or maybe she’s a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man.

Actually, there’s no maybe about that last one. That’s Laura alright.

So okay, there are plenty of reasons she might want to get a baby this way instead of the more usual way. The real mystery, Stiles thinks, is why she chose _him_.

Lydia Martin always said there was no accounting for taste. Usually though, she said it with extreme prejudice, and in regards to Stiles’s fashion choices. When she was feeling particularly generous, she upgraded his sense of style from “regrettable” to “peculiar”. It probably wasn’t much of an upgrade, to be honest, but Stiles likes to think that he was very slowly winning her over. It would have only taken another decade or two, max.

He really should text her, he thinks, and find out how she’s enjoying Harvard.

He’s lost contact with most of his high school friends since they all scattered on the winds of graduation. It’s even been weeks since he talked to Scott, and they’ve been inseparable since elementary school.

It’s been… _lonely_ , at least until Stiles met Laura, and Stiles doesn’t want to make it all weird and awkward between them.

So maybe Laura has “peculiar” taste as well, and maybe that’s why she chose him, but one thing Stiles knows for certain is that, whatever happens, he doesn’t want to lose her friendship. Not when it’s one of the brightest things in his life at the moment.

 

***

 

Three weeks after The Event, Stiles turns up to the diner after Laura texts him, and she presents him with a pink Hello Kitty backpack full of money. The money is in stacks of twenty dollar bills. It’s hefty, and also feels illicit, like this is a drug deal or something.

“It worked?” Stiles asks, his heart pounding.

Laura gives him a brilliant smile. “It worked!”

“Wow. Um, congratulations, I guess!”

Her smile grows.

“So, how about a celebratory milkshake?” Stiles asks, pushing past his swirling emotions and concentrating on Laura’s obvious joy. “Turns out I can afford it now!”

She laughs, and Stiles thinks that yeah, they can do this. They’ve got this. This is all going to work out great.

 

***

 

Stiles gets home to find his dad sitting on the couch with a bunch of old case files and evidence boxes spread out around him within easy reach.

“What’s all this?” he asks curiously.

“Hmm?” Dad looks up at him, peering at him over the frames of the glasses he only ever wears when he’s deep down some investigative rabbit hole. “Oh, I called Parrish and asked him to bring them over. I’m climbing the walls here, kiddo.” He grimaces. “Well, not literally.”

Right. Because literally he can barely climb the stairs.

Stiles steps forward. It’s actually great to see Dad actually engaged with something after so many months of inactivity. Stiles was starting to worry that he was getting depressed or something. This seems like a positive step.

“So what case is it?” he asks, leaning forward to pick up a photograph.

It’s the burned out remains of a house.

Stiles doesn’t have to ask which one. It was on the front page of the local newspapers for weeks after it happened.

“You’re looking into the Hale fire?” he asks, his stomach clenching as he thinks of Laura’s joy-filled smile. “I thought that was solved.”

“The fire investigator at the time said it was an electrical fault, so Sheriff Knox wrote it off. That never sat entirely right with me, but I was just a lowly deputy when it happened.” Dad shrugs. “I thought, well, one thing I’ve got at the moment is time. Might as well poke around in the files for a while, right?”

“Sure,” Stiles says, swallowing down his disquiet. “Why not?”


	7. Chapter 7

“Firstly,” Peter says when Laura turns up at his front door with a shopping bag full of baby supplies, “congratulations. Secondly, I am not and will never be called anyone’s great-uncle, understood? I’m far too young and pretty.”

“If you say so.” Laura sweeps inside, dumps her bag on the floor, and finds herself wrapped in his embrace.

“Congratulations,” he says again, more quietly this time, his voice cracking. He releases her again, composing himself. “You can use my apartment to store your shopping for two weeks, Laura, no more.”

“Peter…”

“No,” he says firmly. “You need to tell him. And you need to do it before he figures out that your scent is changing. He’ll notice eventually. This was your idea, remember? This is right for the pack. If you believe that, then what’s stopping you from telling him?”

“I just need to wait until the time is right and—”

“When with that be?” Peter cuts in. “When you’re starting to show? When you’re in labor? When the baby’s enrolled in kindergarten?”

“Don’t get all…” She waves her hand at him. “Snippy. I’ll tell him!” She sighs. “I’d hoped he’d feel more settled once we came back here, but if anything it’s made him worse.”

Peter narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because…” She groans.

“Why?” Peter asks again, folding his arms over his chest. He fixes his gaze on her, and leaves her nowhere to hide.

“Because there are things that you don’t know about the fire, Peter!”

Peter’s expression shutters. “Explain.”

Fuck.

Laura could really use a drink right now, but she guesses she’ll have to settle for whatever herbal teas Peter has stashed away in his kitchen. She drags a finger through her hair, and fights the urge to growl at her uncle.

“Because he thinks the fire is his fault,” she says at last. “Because he thinks I don’t know it was Argent!”

“Of course it was Argent,” Peter says, his brow furrowing. “Who else could it be? Your mother tried to broker a peace, and Gerard killed Deucalion’s pack. And then he killed ours.”

“No,” Laura says, her throat aching. “It wasn’t Gerard. Well, the order probably came from him. But it was _Kate_  who did it. Kate Argent.”

 

***

 

In those fraught, panicked days after the fire, they were both unanchored, grieving, verging from hysteria to near-catatonia and back again. The alpha spark had felt more like poison than a source of strength to Laura. It had burned in her blood like acid. She’d fought against it because she didn’t want it. It represented everything, _everyone_ , she had lost.

And Derek…

They’d clung together and cried and howled and then—it must have been four days after the fire—Laura had been trudging back to their hotel room, gas station sandwiches swinging from a plastic bag on her wrist—when she’d heard Derek saying a name from inside the room:

_“K-Kate?”_

 By the time Laura made it inside he had locked himself in the bathroom. He didn’t come out for a long time. And when he did, he was quiet.

Laura feels like he’s been quiet ever since.

She found his phone later, smashed, with the SIM card torn out and crushed.

 _Kate_.

She’d known there was a girlfriend, or at least someone he was crushing on. He was her little brother, and while she didn’t really care to know the details, there was no hiding the way his face pinked up when he heard his text message alert, or how he’d started to come home later from school in the afternoons, and sometimes even sneak out at night.

She’d known, but she hadn’t got around to teasing him about it yet.

And then the fire happened.

And then that phone call happened.

And then his nightmares did. If he was silent during the day, he wasn’t at night. And Laura heard the name Kate more in the weeks and months that followed. It wasn’t hard to draw a picture. His dreams, uncomfortably hot and heavy for his sister sharing the same room, never failed to turn into nightmares.

_No, Kate! No, please, don’t!_

And Laura didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to ask him, when he would barely look her in the eye every day. She didn’t know how to ask him without making it worse.

And the nightmares stopped, after a while, and Laura doesn’t know what she thought. That he was getting better? That if he didn’t want to talk about it, then that was the right thing to do? It was probably more selfishness than ignorance, in the end. She should have talked to him, but Derek was all she had left, and she didn’t want to drive him away. She was so afraid of being left alone.

It was the wrong choice, she knows that now, because it hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s festered between them, and it hurts, but if she tells him now that she’s known for years… God. She’s terrified of how he’ll react. Terrified that he’ll run from her, that he’ll turn into an omega, that some hunter will find him feral and take him down, and that she’ll lose him now in a more tangible way than she already has.

She’d told herself for so long that she wasn’t _sure_ , that it was all supposition, and the worst thing she could do was to accuse him of something he hadn’t done. It had been a convenient excuse for the most part.

But then, four years after the fire, she’d logged back into her long-abandoned Facebook account. It was New Year’s Eve, and she’d been a little tipsy, and a lot maudlin. And that’s when she saw it: a group she’d been added to without her permission. A high school reunion group. _Five years, coming up!_ _Who’s coming back to BH to celebrate next year? Go, Cyclones!_ Lots of bullshit about husbands and babies and careers. Lots of photographs too.

And then, as she was scrolling down, she’d seen one of Derek, in his basketball uniform, smiling bashfully at a woman with a BHHS lanyard around her neck.

Someone had written: _Hands up who else had a crush on Ms. Jones!_ And below that: _Shit, yeah! Kate was hot. I hope she’s not on here, lol!_

She wasn’t, because there was no such person as Kate Jones.

But Laura already knew that, because she knew that face. She remembered her from when she’d rolled into town at her father’s side, to talk peace with Deucalion—except it hadn’t been peace talks after all, it’d had been an ambush.

The woman was Kate _Argent_.

And just like that, all the pieces had fallen into place, and Laura knew without a shadow of a doubt what had happened to Derek.

 

***

 

Peter’s eyes flash blue, and his lip curls, his fangs appearing. He stalks toward Laura. “You _know_ this for sure? You know that Kate Argent was screwing your brother?”

Laura refuses to take a step back, even though her heart is pounding. For a moment she feels like she did in the Preserve, months ago, when she faced down the feral omega who wanted to tear her throat out. When, horrified, she realised it was the uncle she’d left behind.

“I  _think_ so!” Is it a lie? She can’t even tell. Worse than that, she doesn’t know if it’s Peter she’s lying to, or herself. “It fits—someone had to have told them about the tunnels! But I haven’t asked him!”

“Why the fuck not?” Peter asks, his voice wavering on a low, angry growl.

Her eyes sting with tears. “Because I left it too late, and if I tell him now that I’ve known all along, he’ll think I was punishing him!”

Peter tilts his head, his eyes gleaming brighter for a moment before his half-shift recedes. “And were you?” he asks mildly. “Were you punishing him?”

“I… I don’t _know_!” She scrubs at her tears. “I don’t know!”

“Laura,” he says, and then exhales heavily and starts again. “Lulu, he needs to know. You’re not protecting his feelings by not asking him about this. You’re protecting your own. And that’s not what an alpha does.”

“I’m scared it will drive him away.” She swallows. “For years I thought he was all I had left!”

Peter mouth turns up in a short, bitter smile, and Laura is remind of her other great failure as an alpha. Then he draws a deep breath, and shrugs his shoulders. “But isn’t that what’s already happened? Hasn’t this already driven him away?” His stare is intense. “You’re his alpha, Lulu. It’s your job to bring him home.”

 

 

***

 

The drive back to the loft is made in silence. Peter, sitting in the passenger seat, taps his fingers on his knee over and over again, as though he’s beating out a faint rhythm only he can hear. Laura recognises the action from back when Peter sat beside her mother at pack meetings: he’s deep in thought, although the expression on his face is bland.

“Never play poker with your uncle!” her dad used to tell her, winking.

Peter is impossible to read.

It’s early evening when they pull up in the street outside the loft, and climb the steps to the door.

Laura pulls the door open and steps inside. There’s no sign of movement. There aren’t even any dirty dishes in the sink, and Laura wonders if Derek has even left his room all day.

God. How did she ever think this was okay? How did this ever become their new normal? It happened so gradually and Laura hadn’t noticed how drastic the shift was until Peter, who only came back into their lives a few months ago, began to poke and prod at the pair of them.

How could she let her little brother slip so far away?

“Derek!” Peter calls. “Pack meeting, now!”

It takes a few moments before Derek appears, moving silently down the steps. He looks as expressionless as Peter did in the car, but his shoulders are a little hunched, his posture defensive, and Laura wonders why she’s never before noticed that he always looks like he’s waiting to be attacked.

“Sit,” Peter says, pointing the couch. Then he turns to face Laura. “Both of you.”

Laura sits. So does Derek, keeping as much space between them as he can.

Peter stands in front of them and looks from one to the other. “We need to clear the air, children.”

Derek’s throat clicks as he swallows.

“Firstly,” Peter says. “The fire. Kate Argent.”

He’s barely got the words out before Derek’s moving, limbs flailing as he tries to push himself off the couch. But Peter is faster, a hand wrapped around Derek’s throat, pushing him back down.

“Sit,” he says, his voice firm. “Stay.”

There are no claws out yet, but Laura can feel Derek’s distress, and she wants to tell Peter to stop, to leave him alone, to make it all go away. She feels a whine building in the back of her throat.

“Stay,” Peter repeats, and slowly releases Derek. He crouches down in front of him. “I’m here as your uncle, not as your alpha’s left hand. You can tell me what happened, pup. It’s okay.”

Derek opens his mouth, his breath hitching. He blinks and tears slide down his cheeks.

“It was Kate, yes?” Peter asks. “You told her about the tunnels?”

Derek jerks his head in a nod, and closes his eyes. Braces himself as though he’s waiting for the left hand’s killing blow.

Peter puts a hand on his knee. “It’s okay, pup. It’s not your fault.”

And Derek crumples forward into his uncle’s embrace.

Laura sobs, pressing her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound.

“H-how did you find out?” Derek whispers, his voice breaking with his tears.

Peter rubs his back gently, and doesn’t answer. He looks at Laura.

“I knew,” Laura says, her voice small. “I heard you on the phone that time, when we were in the hotel.”

Derek turns his face to her. He’s pale, broken, betrayal written all over his expression. “You _knew_?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and the small word seems so inadequate for the years of heartbreak and distance that have passed between them.  

“You were children,” Peter says. “Both of you. It’s not your fault.”

And Laura wonders if he really believes that, of if he’s only saying it because this is what they need to move forward, as a pack. She wonders if, maybe, he says if often enough that she and Derek will believe it one day too.

“Mistakes were made,” Peter says, easing Derek back. “Not just by you, pup. I’m the one who swore to protect the pack, hmm?” His smile falters. “But this is our fresh start. We’re Hales, and Beacon Hills is our territory. It’s our _home_. Mine, and yours, and the next generation’s too.”

Derek’s brow creases.

“Yeah,” Laura whispers, her voice rough with tears. She reaches out for Derek’s hand, and tugs it over. Presses it against her abdomen.

His eyes widen in shock.

“Beacon Hills is our home,” Peter says. “We don’t run. We rebuild, and we stand our fucking ground. _Together_.”

From uncle to left hand, in the space of a heartbeat. 

His eyes flash brilliant blue.

 

***

 

It’s no magic fix. Derek is still quiet, still awkward around her, still half-afraid she’s going to throw him out of the pack or order Peter to kill him. But in the days and weeks that follow, they’re slowly getting better.

“You smell good,” Derek tells her one night, and then flushes. “Like Mom did when she was pregnant. You smell like pack again.”

Laura pauses for a moment in the middle of chopping vegetables. “Did I not smell like pack before?”

Derek looks away and shrugs. “It’s different. New.”

“Well, that’s good, right?” Laura figures they could use a little different, and a little new.

Derek glances at her, and looks away again, but not before she sees the quick quirk of his mouth that’s almost a smile. “Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s good.”


	8. Chapter 8

Derek still finds it hard to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. He has fewer nightmares now, and his pack bonds feel stronger than they did before, the frayed fibres knitting together again, but he’s still uneasy. Part of him can’t quite believe that Laura didn’t throw him out of the pack, or worse, for what he did. Part of him feels a twist of hot, sharp anger in his gut when he remembers that she’d known all along. Strangely, it’s easier to be near Peter now. Because Peter is, in so many ways, more dangerous than Laura, but there’s a strange sort of comfort in knowing that if Peter ever kills him, he’ll find the right sort of words to make sure that Derek understands exactly why he’s doing it. Peter is infinitely complex, and yet at the same time he’s incredibly straight-forward. If someone needs killing, then Peter will do the job. Mom always said that Peter was morally ambiguous, but Derek has never seen him as anything other that utterly pragmatic. Morality doesn’t even come into it.

Maybe that’s what Mom meant though.

A weight has been lifted though. Derek can’t pretend otherwise. He’s still ashamed, and guilty, but he’s also relieved it’s out in the open, because Kate is still a threat to them. Wherever she is, Derek knows she hasn’t forgotten her promise to come back and kill them. And Peter knows that now. And Peter knowing makes them safer, doesn’t it? Because Kate might be a monster, but Peter is the left hand of the alpha. He’s a born predator and the fire, it seems, has only made his edges sharper.

It’s all in the open now, and maybe they’re going to be okay.

 

***

 

Laura’s scent changes day by day, subtle, warm notes clinging to the familiar ones of _alpha_ and _sister_ and _pack_ , overlaid to make something richer. Notes upon notes, until a melody becomes a symphony. Derek finds himself leaning closer to her at times, just to breathe it in, equally entranced and repelled when _alpha_ and _sister_ and _pack_ somehow becomes _want_ and _yes_ and _mine_.

He doesn’t remember feeling this way when Mom was pregnant with Cora or the twins, but his pack instincts have been messed up for years, haven’t they?

One night, fighting the urge to plaster himself against Laura’s back and just _inhale_ , he hurries upstairs instead and locks himself in the bathroom.

Even there, under the overriding stench of bleach—why the hell Laura cleaned the bathroom with bleach he has no idea—he can’t seem to escape the scent.

 

***

 

“I have a plan,” Peter declares one evening, turning up unannounced with Thai takeout.

Laura’s sitting on the floor going through a catalog full of nursery stuff and baby clothes. She’s circling the stuff she thinks she’s going to need in blue Sharpie. Derek has seen her flick back to the page with the little green dinosaur onesie—complete with soft felt spines down the back—but she hasn’t circled it yet. They lived on the run for so long that anything that isn't an absolute necessity feels almost frivolous.

Laura sets the catalog aside. “What plan?”

“Derek?” Peter asks, holding the bags out.

Derek divests him of them, and carries them into the kitchen to wrangle up some plates and cutlery.

Peter waits until they’re all seated around the coffee table, steaming plates in front of them, before he tells them.

“The house,” he says. “I want to rebuild the house.”

Derek catches Laura’s gaze.

“I don’t know,” Laura says slowly.

“Hear me out,” Peter says. “We have the money, and this loft is no place to bring up a cub. Children need space to run around. Werewolf children more than most. Are you telling me that you don’t want your child to grow up like you both did? Like I did? Running barefoot in the Preserve?”

Derek feels the ache of it in his bones. He also recognises it as pure emotional blackmail.

So does Laura. “What’s your angle?”

Peter gives her an approving smile. “Well, so far we’re all under the radar here, aren’t we? But if the Hale house was to be rebuilt, I imagine that would interest the townspeople a little, wouldn’t it? Might even make the local newspaper.”

A chill runs through Derek.

“You want to draw out the Argents,” Laura says. “By rebuilding our house.”

“I very much want to drew out the Argents,” Peter agrees, eyes gleaming.

Laura frowns. “You want to use us as bait?”

“You make it sound so underhanded, Lulu.” Peter’s smile is as sharp as his gaze. “We’re _already_ bait. But this way we at least get to be prepared for when they might try to snap us up.”

Laura nods slowly, and Derek wonders if she’s aware her hands have slipped to her abdomen. Protective. “What would we need to do?”

“Nothing except pick out floor plans and fixtures,” Peter tells her. “And when they come for us, I’ll be waiting for them.”

“It’s dangerous,” Laura murmurs.

“It’s no more dangerous than doing nothing,” Peter counters. He digs his chopsticks into his pad thai. “We have a small advantage if we set the trap ourselves. Do you still want to be looking over your shoulder in ten years, when you’re walking your child to school?”

Laura is quiet.

“She—” Derek swallows, and tries again. “Kate. She’ll come for us. She won’t ever stop.”

Laura’s gaze is full of sorrow as she looks at him. She presses her mouth into a thin line, and then looks back at Peter. She nods. “We’ll do it. We’ll rebuild the house and draw the Argents back here.”

“And I’ll rip their hearts out of their chests,” Peter says, his eyes flashing blue.

 

***

 

One night on the door of the club, Derek tells Boyd that he’s going to be an uncle.

“That’s great, man!” Boyd slaps him on the back, and Derek feels warmth spread through him. “Congratulations!”

Next week, Boyd presents him with a tiny pair of knitted booties.

“Erica made them,” he says with a bashful smile. “She’s learning how to knit.”

The booties are yellow, and a little lopsided.

“They’re so tiny,” Derek says doubtfully. They fit into the palm of his hand.

“So are babies,” Boyd points out.

That’s fair.

Derek tucks the booties carefully into the pocket of his leather jacket. “Tell Erica thanks. That’s really nice of her.”

“No problem,” Boyd says.

Later, when he’s back home, Derek sets the yellow booties carefully down on the coffee table, and thinks about how strange it is that some girl he’s never met knitted these for his sister’s baby. And how long it’s been since he remembered what friends do.

 

***

 

Peter was right about their plans to rebuild the house making the local paper. It’s just a small article on the third page, noting that planning permission has been given to bulldoze the remains of the old house, and begin rebuilding soon. There’s a photograph of Peter from before the fire, smiling into the camera. Derek doesn’t know where the paper found it. There are no photographs of him and Laura, but they’re mentioned in the article as being back in town.

Derek doesn’t read the whole thing.

He isn’t sure how he feels about the plan to rebuild the house, and it has nothing to do with letting the Argents know they’re back in Beacon Hills.

His parents and siblings died in that house, along with most of the rest of his pack.

He wonders if he’ll imagine their screams for the rest of his life.

He wonders how loud they’ll be when he’s living on top of their graves.

 

***

 

It’s raining when Derek gets to the diner, droplets sliding down the back of his neck and into his shirt. He’s tired and hungry after a long shift at the club, and he managed to step in a puddle on the walk to the diner, and then almost get hit by a car that failed to stop at the crosswalk. He’s really not in the mood to sit around and wait for Laura to finish work, but it was either that or walk the rest of the way back to the loft in the rain.

He pushes open the diner door and scowls as the bells jingle.

Harold the drunk is sleeping in a corner booth, and there’s a guy sitting up at the counter with a bunch of books spread out in front of him taking up all the space like he thinks he owns the place. His stool squeaks as he spins around to take a look at the new arrival, and Derek freezes as the guy’s scent hits him.

_Want. Yes. Mine._

The guy can’t be any older than eighteen or nineteen. He’s pale, with mole-spotted skin. He has dark hair spiked up in all different directions as though he’s been dragging his hands through it—Derek feels an irrational surge of heat at the thought of doing the same—large dark eyes, and an upturned nose. He has a wide, generous mouth that at the moment has a pen hanging from it. He’s slim, but not scrawny, and holds himself awkwardly under Derek’s scrutiny, one leg jiggling.

Derek just stares.

“Oh,” the guy says at last, stumbling down from the stool and gathering up all his books. “Sorry. I’m in your way.”

 _No_ , Derek wants to tell him, _you’re not,_ but he can’t even open his mouth.  

The guy takes his books and dumps them on a table in the nearest booth. Then he returns to the counter for his milkshake, side-eyeing Derek like he thinks he’s about to rob the place or something, because Derek still hasn’t moved.

_Want. Yes. Mine._

His wolf is pushing close to the surface of his skin, and Derek curls his fingers into fists. He feels the press of claws into his palms, and the quick sting as they break the skin. Shit. He’s _shifting_. He averts his gaze before his eyes flash, and sucks in a deep breath in an attempt to calm his racing heart.

All that does is fill his lungs with another burst of the guy’s scent, and Derek twitches as he feels his bones start to shift.

He wants. He wants like he hasn’t wanted in years. He wants to grab the guy, and push his face into his throat, breathe in more of his intoxicating scent. He wants to lick the taste of the guy’s salt-skin in a path all the way up the long column of his throat, and make the guy whine and shiver against him in a need equal to his own. He wants to press his mouth against the guy’s, and swallow every needy sound he makes.

His wolf is howling at him to make his move, but Derek is frozen in shock and fighting for control. It takes him a moment to realise that Laura’s come out of the kitchen, and the guy is saying something to her.

“…call 911?” the guy finishes in an undertone that Derek’s not supposed to be able to hear.

“He’s not a tweaker, Stiles. He’s my brother.” Laura says, and raises her voice. “Derek? Derek, are you okay? You’re zoning out there, little brother.”

There’s a lightness in her tone that Derek knows is all an act. She’s worried about him, but she’s also warning him not to shift. Not here, not now. Her tone might be light, but it’s brittle at the same time. Even the guy, Stiles, gives her a dubious look.

Derek pushes his wolf back down, and jerks his chin in a nod.

“Busy night, I guess,” Laura says. “Stiles, this is my brother, Derek. Derek, this is Stiles.”

“Uh,” Stiles says, and raises his hand in an awkward wave. “Hi.”

Derek manages to nod again, and that’s when he realises: the scent. The scent that’s combined with Laura’s, that has him itching to get closer to her. The scent of her pregnancy, and of home, and pack. The scent that even the bleach in the bathroom couldn’t entirely drown out.

It’s his mate’s scent.

“Stiles hangs out here because he has no other friends,” Laura says teasingly.

“Uh, excuse you. I also have insomnia!”

Derek stares at them both.

It’s his mate.

His mate is the father of his sister’s baby.

Laura reaches out over the counter and punches Stiles lightly on the shoulder.

“I have to go,” Derek blurts out.

“It’s raining out there, dude,” Stiles says, his brow creased.

“I have to go,” Derek repeats.

“Der?” Laura calls, but he’s already fled back out into the rain, the bells on the door jingling loudly behind him.

 

***

 

Maybe, at one time, Derek might have laughed at how the universe just won’t give him a fucking break. Maybe someone else still would. But if there’s one thing Derek knows for sure, it’s that he doesn’t deserve a break. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness, or a pack, or a mate.

And Laura doesn’t deserve to have a beta, and a brother, who brings her nothing but heartache.

 _I’m sorry_ , he writes on a note that he leaves on the kitchen counter.

And then he sets his keys down beside the note, and he goes upstairs and grabs the bag that he never bothered to unpack, and he does what he should have done months ago.

He leaves.


	9. Chapter 9

“Did you hear about this?” Dad asks, shaking out the newspaper as Stiles makes breakfast.

“What?” Stiles asks. “Also, who even reads newspapers anymore? Don’t you have a phone like regular people?”

Dad ignores that. “The Hales are back in town. They’re rebuilding the house.”

“Oh.” Stiles feels a jolt. Right. The Hales. Who he has somehow forgotten to mention to his dad that he knows. And that he is also playing an integral part in producing a new one. _Those_ Hales. “Um, yeah. I knew they were back in town. I didn’t know about the house though.”

Dad peers at him over the frames of his reading glasses. “You knew they were back in town?”

“Yeah. My friend Laura? From the diner? It’s Laura Hale.”

His Dad frowns. “You didn’t mention this when I told you I was checking out the Hale file again.”

“What’s to mention?” Stiles asks, smacking the side of the coffee maker to get it to start working. They really need to get a new one of those at some point. “It’s not like we sit around and talk about that time most of her family got incinerated.”

“I guess not,” Dad says. “It’s just the three of them left, isn’t it?”

 _Three and a bit_ , Stiles thinks, and feels his face flooding with warmth.

“I think so? Laura doesn’t talk about her family much, and I don’t really blame her.” He gives the coffee maker another smack. “I met her brother last night though.”

Her incredibly hot and weird brother. And Stiles didn’t exactly meet him, did he? He stood there while the guy glared at him and then turned around and ran like Stiles was the devil or something. Definitely hot, but definitely weird. And Laura was weird as well. Whatever Hale family weirdness Stiles had stepped into there, he has no idea, only that there was sudden tension in the air thick enough to choke on. It had felt like Stiles had wandered on stage in the middle of some dramatic moment but nobody had given him a script. Definitely some heavy stuff going on, and it had been awkward as hell, but Stiles figures he’s already jerked off into a jar for Laura Hale, and whatever was going on last night can’t even come close to that, right? What’s a little more awkwardness thrown in?

“Those poor kids,” Dad says, and Stiles feels an odd moment of disconnect thinking of Laura and Derek that way, but of course they were only teenagers back then and that's how Dad remembers them. Laura must’ve been barely eighteen.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and thinks of Derek Hale. It’s probably unfair to think of him as weird, right? He works nights, which explains his zombification—Stiles once saw his dad get back from a night shift, carefully peel an orange, toss the segments in the trash and then just stare at the peel in his hand like he was knew something had gone wrong but couldn’t quite figure it out. Sleep deprivation is a bitch. And is it any surprise that Derek’s not a Chatty Cathy? The Hales have been through hell. It’s probably a miracle any of them are functioning at all.

Stiles isn’t sure he would be, in their shoes.

Dad sets the newspaper aside and rolls his shoulders. “How’s the Jeep running?”

Stiles gives him a genuine smile. “Really good. It starts like clockwork every time!”

“Well, that’s what a starter motor does, son,” Dad says.

“My old one didn’t.”

Dad huffs out a laugh. “The tutoring is still going well, then?”

“Yeah. It’s doing better than I thought.” Stiles is getting stupidly good at lying about this. And while it works for little things like groceries and the electric bill and the Jeep’s starter motor, he’s not sure yet how he’s going to explain that the hospital bill has been paid. He’s hoping to intercept all the mail until he figures out a way around it. “And it’s awesome to have the Jeep on the road again.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Dad says with a fond smile. “So, how about we celebrate that by going for a drive?”

“Um.” Stiles blinks, and shrugs. “Sure. Where are we going?”

He figures out halfway there, and tells himself he probably should have known.

 

***

 

Once upon a time, the private road that snaked through the Preserve ended at a three-storey house with a wraparound porch, bay windows, and a Dutch gable. Stiles has seen the photographs. Now there’s nothing left except the front façade of the house, charred and blackened, and the towering chimney that leans at an ominous angle.

Stiles pulls the Jeep up behind what looks like a contractor’s truck, and goes around to help Dad out the passenger side. They do an awkward little dance while Dad gets his crutches situated, and then they approach the remains of the house.

The contractor turns out to be a surveyor, and some guy that dad knows from town.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be a big job,” he says. “Gonna have to shore up the cellar and all the tunnels before we even bring in the bulldozers to clear the site.”

“Never did figure out what those tunnels were about,” Dad says, gazing at the charred remains of the house.

The surveyor shrugs. “A leftover from bootlegging days, maybe? A bunch of old families made their money that way around here. This once place up in Elk Creek, I had the lady try to tell me it was from the Underground Railroad.” He shakes his head. “In California? In a house built in the twenties? Place was still full of empty whisky barrels.”

Dad laughs at that.

Stiles looks at the house, and at the lay of the land, and tries to remember where the three tunnels came out. He’s seen the plans, and they make no sense. How would a narrow tunnel that connects the house basement to a root cellar be of any use to bootleggers? And the other two didn't lead anywhere at all except few hundred feet into the Preserve. 

Dad and the surveyor chat for a few more minutes, and then the surveyor leaves to go back into town.

Dad leans on his crutches and stares at the house, like he’s waiting for it to tell him all its secrets.

Stiles stands with him.

“You just…” Dad exhales heavily. “When your house is burning down, you don’t lock yourself in the fucking cellar.”

“Okay, but the fire investigator said it was an electrical fault, right?” Stiles asks. “I don’t know, maybe they were having a slumber party down there or something?”

“It was a regular concrete cellar, Stiles,” Dad says. “It was storage space. There were no bedrooms down there. Not even a couch and a TV. So what the hell were eight people doing down there that night? It doesn’t make any sense, unless…”

Stiles feels a prickling of unease down his spine. “Unless what?”

“Unless it wasn’t just the fire they were trying to get away from,” Dad says, his expression hard. “Unless there was some reason they couldn’t run out the front door, so they tried for the tunnels instead.”

Stiles shivers. “Like what reason?”

Dad gazes around the Preserve. “I don’t know, kid. I really don’t know.”

“You think someone targeted them,” Stiles says, and the realisation is like being doused in cold water. “You think they couldn’t use the doors because whoever set the fire was waiting to pick them off as they came outside. So they tried the tunnels, except they were blocked off somehow too.”

Dad smiles grimly. “Crazy theory, right?”

“Yeah!” Stiles rubs his forehead. “I mean, it’s _insane_ , but it’s also the only thing that fits.”

He understands now why his dad wanted to come out here. It’s been eight years since the fire. There’s no physical evidence left out here. But sometimes it’s important to look at a crime scene to get a sense of the distances, the spaces, even the way the light falls. And sometimes it’s an important reminder that it’s real, that it didn’t just happen on paper and in photographs, and that actual people died here.

Stiles watches as Dad leans heavily on his crutches and looks around the clearing. There’s an old sorrow in his gaze, the weight of what the place is, what it had been once, and of the night itself. Stiles remembers the morning that Dad came home smelling of smoke and ash. He remembers the way his hands shook when washed them in the sink, over and over again, even though they were already clean.

He’s never asked what his dad saw that night, but he knows it was bad.

This isn’t just a puzzle to his dad. This is about his duty to the Hales who lost their lives that night, and the Hales who didn’t.

And, even if Dad doesn’t know it yet, to a tiny Hale who has yet to be born.

 

***

 

On the way back to town, down that twisting road through the trees, they pass a black SUV with heavily tinted windows.

It could be a contractor. It could be a sightseer from town. It could be anyone for any reason, but Stiles sees that his dad notes the licence plate number down.

 

***

 

Stiles’s stomach tells him that it’s lunchtime when they get home. He pulls the Jeep into the driveway, parking beside the cruiser already there. Deputy Jordan Parrish is leaning on the side of it, and he lifts a hand in greeting.

“Hey, it’s your work son!” Stiles says, waving back at Parrish.

Dad gives him a look. “Where the hell do you even come up with this stuff?”

“Oh, please. You love him. It’s adorable.” Stiles climbs out of the Jeep and heads around to the passenger side to help Dad out, only to find Parrish already there. “Hey, dude.”

“Hey, Stiles. How’s college?”

“Not bad. How’s fighting crime in the vast metropolis of Beacon Hills?”

Parrish makes a so-so gesture with his hand. “I gave out two fines for jay walking last week.”

“Good for you! Jay walkers, man. A scourge on decent society!” He gets ahead of Dad and Parrish so he can get the front door. “Are you staying for lunch, Jordan?”

“Uh, I guess? If I’m not intruding?”

“As if. Dad likes you more than me! I’m making sandwiches.”

“Sounds great.”

Stiles leaves Parrish to get Dad settled in the living room, and heads into the kitchen to rustle up some sandwiches and coffee. He decides on some basic turkey and mayo, with extra lettuce and bean sprouts on Dad’s. When he takes them into the living room, it’s to catch the tail end of Jordan giving Dad the weekly recap of what’s been going on down at the station: current investigations, crime stats, and the continuing saga of the scrub jays that have built a nest overlooking the parking lot and now try to attack anyone walking from the station to their cruiser.

“They’re  _birds_ , Parrish,” Dad says, rolling his eyes. “I can’t believe they’re holding the entire station hostage like that.”

“I called the park ranger’s office to see what we should do,” Parrish says. “He laughed at me.”

“Because they’re _birds_ ,” Dad repeats, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Anyhow, Stiles and I went out to the old Hale house this morning to take a look around. We saw an SUV on the way back. Can I get you to run the plate for me?”

“Sure thing, Sheriff,” Parrish says, and takes the piece of notepaper Dad hands him. “I can do it now if you want?”

“Eat your lunch first."

Parrish nods, and tucks the paper into his shirt pocket. “The Hales were pretty well known, weren’t they?”

Parrish hasn’t been in Beacon Hills for long enough to remember the Hales, or the house, back when they were whole.

“They were an old family,” Dad says. “Well liked.”

Stiles exchanges a look with him. If they were so well liked, then why the hell was someone targeting them?

“Do you think that now they’re back in town, there’s going to be trouble?” Parrish asks frankly, and this is why Dad likes him. Parrish gets straight to the point, just like Dad.

“I think that’s a possibility we ought to consider,” Dad says. “I think there’s more to the fire than what you’ll find in those files, that’s for sure.”

“You think it was arson,” Parrish says, raising his eyebrows.

“I think it was murder,” Dad tells him. “The fire investigator was adamant it was an electrical fault, but when your house is burning down around you, you don’t shelter in the goddamn basement. You don’t try and get out that way either, not when you’ve got perfectly good doors and windows on the ground floor. Damned if anyone could tell me why they’d do that.”

Stiles feels a rush of excitement. “Dad!”

“Hmm?”

“Dad, eight years ago nobody could tell you, because Laura and Derek weren’t there, right?”

“Right.”

“But  _Peter_ Hale was,” Stiles says. “He was in the house. And didn’t the paper say he was the one that applied for the planning permission? He’s awake now, so why not ask him?”

Dad blinks at him for a moment. “Shit, kid. Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

Stiles knows.

For eight years his dad has gone around and around in circles with the Hale fire, and he’s so used to treading those same paths that he didn’t even realise that something new had shaken loose that might change the entire picture. Hasn’t Dad always said that the thing any old case needs most of all is a fresh set of eyes? Someone to look at things in a different way? And Stiles has always been good for that.

“You’re friends with Laura, you said?” Dad claps him on the shoulder. “Can you get me her uncle’s number?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I can do that.”

Because Laura is his friend, and he wants to keep her safe.

Her, and the newest Hale that she’s trying to bring into the world.

 

***

 

Parrish heads out to his cruiser after lunch and Stiles trails along with him. He watches as he inputs the licence plate into the cruiser’s onboard computer.

“Who the hell is Gerard Argent?” Parrish asks, and writes the information down for Dad. Argent has an Arizona address. 

Stiles shrugs and takes the notepaper back. “No idea, man. Probably some lost tourist.”

“Probably,” Parrish agrees.


	10. Chapter 10

Laura calls Peter as soon as she gets home to the loft and finds the note that Derek left for her. It takes Peter less than ten minutes to arrive.

“What the hell do you mean he’s gone?” he asks, striding inside and slamming the door shut behind him. “The Argents could be on their way back here already! We need to stick together, not wander off and get picked off one by one!”

Laura shows him the note.

Peter stares at it, and then shakes his head. “What the hell happened?”

Laura’s eyes sting. “I don’t know!”

“I thought we were all on the same page,” Peter says. He pinches the bridge of his nose and draws in a breath. “Have you called him?”

“He’s not answering. I think his phone is switched off.”

“Leave him messages,” Peter instructs. “Tell him you need him back here. You’re his alpha and his sister, and you need him back here. I don’t care what sort of guilt trip you need to put him on, understand? It has to be bigger than the one he’s put himself on. If he’s out there alone, he’s not safe.”

Laura tugs her phone out of her pocket, her hand trembling.

“You’re his alpha,” Peter reminds her. “Use it!”

 

***

 

Several hours later Derek still isn’t answering, and Laura doesn’t know what to do except keep trying. When his mailbox is too full to accept any more voice messages, she continues to send texts telling him to come home.

Peter, meanwhile, paces back and forth in front of the windows.

He’s called Satomi Ito, in the hopes that if Derek tries to get through her territory, she’ll stop him and call Laura and Peter to come and collect him. It’s a good plan, but it’s not foolproof. If Derek’s hopped on a bus or hitchhiked in some stranger’s car he could already be halfway to Sacramento.

Laura draws a deep breath and tries to focus on their pack bond. She can feel Peter’s restless energy thrumming like a guitar string somewhere in her core. It resonates perfectly with her own anxiety.

And she can feel Derek’s bond as well—a sour-tinged note of stress and guilt and pain. Laura can’t remember their bond feeling this wrong since the fire, and she has no idea what’s caused this sudden change. She’d thought, like Peter, that they were all on the same page.

Is it possible that Derek has seen Kate again? Is it possible that he thinks he can draw her away from the pack? It seems like the sort of self-sacrificing bullshit Derek would think he should attempt. Or, worse, what he would think that he deserves.

Laura has failed him as an alpha. She knows that now. Her little brother should never have carried the burden of his guilt and pain for so many years alone simply because Laura didn’t know how to ask him to share it. She’d assumed that he could shed it alone, and she had been so, so wrong about that. She’d assumed that this was just who Derek was now, who they were as a pack, and she’d been wrong. If they hadn’t come back and found Peter alive, if she’d continued on without his guidance, how much more hurt would she have been heaping onto Derek’s head?

She wonders how Mom would have handled something like this, but all that thought does is throw her own deficiencies into sharp relief. Talia Hale would never have let one of her betas slip so far from her. Never.

She tries to draw on her pack bond with Derek, to call him back to her and to reassure him at the same time. But her pack bonds aren’t as strong as they should be. There are too few of them, and they are too thin and strained. She thinks she gets a sense of a third bond, new and fragile and faint, and presses her hand against the slight bulge in her abdomen.

Her phone buzzes, and Laura’s heart skips an anxious beat. She looks at her screen, and discovers it’s a text message from Stiles: _Hey, so my dad wants to know if he can have your uncle Peter’s phone number? He wants to ask him some things about the fire_.

And then, a moment later, she gets: _Sorry. Shit. There was no real way to ease into that_. _Call me?_

It’s totally out of the blue, and Laura hasn’t got time to worry about it right now, on top of Derek. She slides her phone back into her pocket. She’ll call him back later.

“Not your brother?” Peter asks.

Laura shakes her head. “Stiles. His father is the sheriff. He wants to talk to you.”

“Well,” Peter says flippantly. “That’s a conversation I’ll be sure to avoid!”

Laura watches as he starts to pace again.

“He did this when he was small, do you remember? Derek did.” Peter’s smile is strained. “You had a fight, and he broke some toy of yours. An accident, probably, because the pup never had a malicious bone in his body, but he felt so bad he packed his little Ben 10 bag and ran away into the Preserve.”

Laura feels the memory stirring. It aches, but not in an unpleasant way.

“He must have been four or five,” Peter says. “He didn’t get far. Your mother had the whole pack out looking for him, but it was raining, and almost impossible to catch his scent. I found him curled up at the bottom of a tree, like a little squirrel. He cried the whole way home because he thought you would be so mad about the toy, but I think you’d already forgotten it. I think that was probably the moment when I realised he’d never be your left hand and that I’d need to look elsewhere to train up my replacement.”

“Cora?” Laura asks, her breath hitching over her sister’s name.

“I think so,” Peter says softly. “She was a little hellion, wasn’t she?”

Old grief, soft and quiet, settles over the loft, and Laura closes her eyes briefly.

She flashes them open again when the window behind Peter shatters, and the loft fills rapidly with choking smoke.

 

***

 

“No!” Peter grabs at Laura’s shirt as she makes her way toward the door. “The roof!”

He pushes her in front of him as they hurry up the winding steps toward the top floor. The smoke burns, and Laura tries not to breathe it in. It must be laced with wolfsbane; she feels dizzy and weak, disoriented.  

Peter shoves her into her bedroom and slams the door behind her. He drags the pillows off her bed and pushes them into the gap under the door.

Laura hurries toward the window, and to the creaking fire escape she used to sit on to smoke.

Peter grabs her again. “No!”

He positions himself between her and the window.

“Peter,” she says softly.

“Usually I’m a fan of ladies first,” he tells her with a smirk. “Not so much in this case.”

Because of course. If they’re under attack, then the Argents will be watching all the exits. Even the fire escape. Isn’t that exactly what they did eight years ago?

“When we hit the fire escape,” Peter tells her. “Go up. Aim for the roof. It’s a hell of a jump between here and the next building, but you can do it, you hear me?”

Laura nods, blinking back tears.

“You are the _alpha_ ,” Peter says. He brushes his knuckles gently against her swelling belly. “You are carrying the future of this pack. You _will_ make the jump.”

“I can do it,” Laura says with more confidence than she feels.

“Good girl.” Peter’s smile slips. “They weren’t meant to find us here. They were meant to find my apartment, not this place. I’ve been leaving breadcrumbs on rental agreements and voting roles for months. They must have followed me here though.”

Laura’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She grasps Peter’s hand tightly.

“I’m sorry, Lulu,” he says. He leans forward and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You’ll make the jump for me, won’t you?”

“Yes.” Laura blinks, and tears slide down her cheeks. She’s glad Derek’s not here. She doesn’t think it would make a difference. “I’ll make the jump.”

“That’s my girl,” Peter says, and steps forward to open the window. “Let’s go!”

He leaps out onto the fire escape, his beta shift taking over.

Laura is right behind him.

Right behind him as she hears the sudden burst of shots—the hunters are using silencers, but Laura can still hear every single distinct pop of the gunfire from the landing below them. She can hear footsteps on the fire escape steps below; boots ringing on metal.

“Up!” Peter roars, his body jerking back as he’s hit. He lurches forward towards the narrow steps, roaring at the men below them, a shield and a distraction at once. “Go!”

Laura hauls herself up the ladder toward the roof. She hits it, and starts to run.

 

***

 

Another memory.

Peter chasing her around the yard. She must have been eight or nine, no older, and she was fast for her age, but Peter was faster. She had a stitch in her side, and it hurt, and she didn’t want to play anymore.

“No!” she yelled at him. “Stop! It’s not fun anymore!”

“Keep running!” he told her, his eyes flashing. “Run!”

“I don’t _want_ to!”

In the end her yelling and her tears brought Mom out into the yard.

“Peter, what the _hell_ are you doing?”

And then Peter was all smiles, showing his palms, pretending that it was no big deal. “We were just having fun, Talia.”

“He-h-he wouldn’t let me stop running!” Laura sobbed, feeling vindicated by her mother’s sympathy.

“Peter!” Mom exclaimed again, pulling Laura in for a hug. “What the hell is wrong with you? She’s upset! What sort of game were you playing?”

“The sort of game that might save her life one day.”

Mom hugged Laura tighter. “Just stop. Stop it! She’s a _child_! She’s not as strong as you!”

“Which is why she needs to be _faster_!” Peter said, his lip curling.

“Keep your bullshit away from the kids, Peter!” Talia snapped, drawing Laura inside to be consoled with ice cream and chocolate chip cookies.

And Laura, vindictive in her victory, had turned around to smirk at Peter as she’d been ushered inside.

But Peter hadn’t looked annoyed at all, or even ashamed at being put in his place by his alpha. Instead, his expression was drawn, as though he wasn’t angry at what Mom had done, but almost as though he was _sad_.

And that hadn’t made any sense at all to Laura at that age.  

But it was the first time that Laura had realised just how different a left hand was, and just how differently they were taught to see the world.

 

***

 

Laura looks back once. Smoke is curling over the edges of the rooftop.

Peter is no longer behind her.

She can hear sirens in the distance, getting closer.

The wolfsbane has weakened her, but she has to try.

She runs toward the edge of the roof, putting all of her strength into the jump.

She thinks of the small life she’s carrying inside her, and how she refuses to let it end before it even really begins. She sucks in a lungful of clean air, and leaps off the roof of the building, her hair whipping around her face, her arms outstretched.

For a moment she thinks she’s not going to make it, but she catches herself on the edge of the rooftop of the building next door, and hauls herself over. She lands awkwardly on her side, grit and rubble digging in. And then she’s moving again, rolling up onto her knees, climbing to her feet, and running.

She heads for the rooftop entrance to the building, wrenching the rusted door open and breaking the lock in the process.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness.

A moment too long.

There’s a pop, and a muzzle flash, and a burst of pain in her chest. She stumbles down the steps and lands on the dirt linoleum floor.

She blinks through the pain, a whine building in the back of her throat, and sees, through the tangle of her hair, a pair of shining brown boots appear in her narrow field of vision. Then the person wearing them squats down, and Laura sees the barrel of a gun, and the smiling face behind it.

“Hello,” Kate Argent says, her smile wide with delight. “You must be Laura Hale.”

 


	11. Chapter 11

Dawn is breaking as Derek reaches the turnoff to the highway exit from Beacon Hills. He’s got no real direction in mind, just the thought that he needs to get away from Laura, and from the new pack she’s building that has no place for him in it. Derek doesn’t begrudge her that. It’s better if he goes instead of stays around and begins to resent her and her happiness. Maybe somewhere out there he’ll find a pack he can join before he becomes an omega. He just wants a place where he can live quietly, and cause no trouble to his alpha, and be more or less left alone. With his name and his history he’s not sure if there’s any pack out there that would want him, but he has to try. He can’t stay here, where he’s poison.

His phone buzzes a few times, but he turns if off. He thinks about throwing it away, but he’s not quite ready to do that. His pack bond might be brittle, but it’s all he has left.

Derek moves over onto the shoulder of the road as he hears a rattling truck coming up behind him. It passes him, and then pulls over.

“Derek?” Boyd leans out the driver’s window. “You need a lift somewhere?”

Derek climbs into the cab of the truck. “What are you still doing up?”

“Oh, I’ve got a few things to take care of at the day job before I head home. Where are you headed?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

Boyd looks at him steadily. “Everything okay with you, man?”

And Derek has no idea how to answer that, so he just shrugs, and stares out the windshield.

 

 

***

 

Boyd’s day job is at the tire place out on the way to the highway. He hates his job, more or less, but tells Derek it’s not as bad as working the door at the club. Besides, it’s only for a little while longer, and then he and Erica should have enough saved to move away from Beacon Hills.

“I mean,” Boyd says as Derek helps him shift a stack of tires, “I don’t hate it here or anything, but it’s a dead end, you know? We want to get a camper van and just travel around the country for a while. I’ll pick up some odd jobs, and we can see the sights. We’ve never even left California.”

“I was in New York for a while,” Derek offers.

“Really?” Boyd raises his eyebrows. “What was that like?”

“Cold,” Derek tells him.

Boyd laughs.

They work for a little while longer, and Derek no longer feels the same itch to escape. He’s always felt comfortable around Boyd, though. He’s composed and unruffled even in the middle of facing off with some belligerent drunk, and Derek finds his presence calming.

“So, I’ve gotta take Erica to a specialist’s appointment tomorrow in Sacramento,” Boyd says. “Is that the way you’re heading?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, stick around for a day,” Boyd says, “and you can catch a ride with us tomorrow. Hitching, man… I know you can handle yourself and all that, but there are some real weirdos out there.”

Derek almost smiles at that. And yeah, if he was just a regular human, even one as built as Boyd, he’d probably never hitchhike either. But the claws and the fangs and the super healing go a long way towards changing the odds in his favor. Although if the Argents are coming back, then it’d be just Derek’s luck to meet them on the highway wouldn’t it? And even his claws and fangs and super healing aren’t much use against wolfsbane bullets.

Boyd takes his silence as uncertainty. “You can crash on our couch tonight, and we’ll get going first thing in the morning. Also, I make a mean breakfast, just saying.”

“Okay,” Derek says. “Yeah, thanks.”

 

***

 

Boyd lives in a small apartment on the outskirts of town. It’s nothing fancy. From the outside it’s a little rundown, but Derek’s lived in worse. And, once Boyd unlocks the door and ushers him inside, it’s obvious that they’ve decorated the place with as much care as they can. The furniture is mismatched, and the carpet is worn and faded, but there are bright knickknacks and framed photographs all around the place.

A girl trails out from the kitchen to meet them. She’s pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and frizzy hair escaping from the confines of her hoodie. She’s wearing pajama pants and fuzzy socks. She smells faintly of medications in the way that only people with chronic conditions do. They’ve permeated her entire scent.

“This is Derek,” Boyd says, crossing the floor to give the girl a quick kiss. “Derek, this is Erica, my girlfriend.”

“Hi,” Derek says.

“Hi!” Erica gives Derek an awkward wave. “I, um.” She punches Boyd in the arm. “Why didn’t you say you were bringing someone home? I’m still in my pajamas!”

“And you look beautiful,” Boyd tells her with a broad smile.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna go and get in the shower.”

“I’ll start breakfast,” Boyd says.

Boyd makes omelets, and Derek finds himself roped in to help with the chopping.

“I do most of the cooking,” Boyd tells him. “It’s been a while since Erica had a seizure, but this one time it was when she was standing right at the stove, stirring this pot of boiling noodles. If I hadn’t been there and grabbed the handle as she went down, I don’t even want to know how bad it could’ve turned out.”

Derek nods. They’re both so young, but they have they give off the comfortable domestic vibe of a long-term couple. “Have you two been together long?”

“We’ve been friends since middle school.” Boyd cracks an egg into a mixing bowl. “But we only got together in senior year. So we’ve been together just over a year, but we’ve known each other for a lot longer than that. She’s my best friend, man.”

Derek nods, a little jealous of Boyd’s quiet certainty.

“Our parents aren’t exactly on board still,” Boyd says. “My mom is cool, but my dad is all like ‘Why aren’t you with a nice black girl?’ and her parents think that because she’s moved in with me she’s somehow going to forget how to manage her health, which is bullshit, but they’ll all come around. And if they don’t, fuck em, right?”

“Right,” Derek agrees with a smile.

“So that’s me,” Boyd says. “What about you? I thought you were looking forward to being an uncle.”

Derek feels a knot of anxiety twist in his gut. “It got complicated.”

“Yeah?” Boyd whisks the eggs.

“Laura will be better off if I’m not around screwing things up for her and the baby.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No. I just… I just know it would be.”

Boyd doesn’t push, which is what Derek likes about him the most. “Well, I’m sorry it’s not working out for you here. You’re a good guy, and it’s been good working with you.”

“Thanks,” Derek says, and nods. “It’s been good working with you too.”

It’s been a long time since he’s had anyone he could consider even close to a friend, and regret starts to creep in. Maybe… maybe he _could_ stay. And then he thinks of Stiles, and his scent, and his wide, dark eyes, and he knows that he has to leave before he ruins everything for Laura and the baby.

He turns back to chopping up mushroom, and tries to push all thoughts of Stiles from his mind.

 

***

 

Erica doesn’t have a regular job, because of her epilepsy. She works from home doing data entry a few hours a day, and she’s learning how to knit from YouTube tutorials, so she can make things to sell at the local craft markets.

Some days she can’t work on the computer at all, because her seizures leave her woozy and unwell for hours and days afterward but, she tells Derek over breakfast, she hasn’t had a seizure in months now. She has a specialist’s appointment tomorrow in Sacramento, and she’s not looking forward to it because they usually try and adjust her meds, and that leaves her “wonky” for a while afterwards. But she’s upbeat about her condition, which she happily points out is all down to Boyd.

“I was bullied like hell in school,” she tells Derek frankly. “I was miserable until Boyd came along.”

“And then we were miserable together,” Boyd grins.

She laughs. “No, then we were _happy_ together! Except it took this shy lug forever to realise I was totally in love with him!”

They talk for a while about high school, and about how they, alongside some kid called Isaac, were the social rejects. About how that didn’t matter once they all started hanging out together.

Derek likes them. He likes that they’re happy. It makes him wonder if at some point he’ll be able to look back on everything and know that he’s in a better place than he was then. Than he is now. Boyd and Erica make him feel like maybe, some day, he’ll find some place to belong as well, and someone to belong with.

 

***

 

 

After breakfast, Boyd offers Derek the couch to crash out on for a few hours. They both worked overnight, and Derek can see that Boyd is struggling to stay awake. Derek doesn’t need as much sleep as a human does, but he thanks Boyd anyway, and figures he can at least relax for a while and let his host get some needed rest. He takes his boots off, shrugs out of his jacket, and then stretches out on the couch and closes his eyes.

He hears Boyd going to bed in the bedroom: the rasp of a zipper, the creak of a mattress and, after a while, his long, steady breaths.

He hears Erica tapping away at the keys of her computer for a while, and then moving around in the kitchen as she makes herself a cup of tea before returning to work at the small table there.

He feels a little guilty for intruding, and for forcing Erica out of her own spaces in the tiny living room, but he recognizes the kindness that they’ve offered him, and doesn’t want to make them feel bad by refusing it.

He even dozes for a little while, although he never falls into a truly deep sleep. His sleep is shallow, disturbed, and what strange dreams he has are haunted by glimpses of a young man with pale mole-dotted skin who looked at him like he was crazy.

After a few hours lying on the couch, Derek gets up again when he hears Erica moving around in the kitchen. He makes sure to make some noise getting up; he doesn’t want to startle her.

“Hey,” he says, leaning in the doorway. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“I’m just heating up leftovers for lunch,” she says. “Do you like Mexican?”

“I like it enough that I’ve never had leftovers.”

Erica laughs, throwing her head back, and for a moment Derek sees a vibrant, energetic girl behind the pallid complexion and the shadows under her eyes. He glimpses the girl that Boyd sees every day, he thinks.

The leftovers heat up well enough, and by the time they’re ready Boyd has dragged himself out of bed and joins them. There are only two chairs at the little table, so Erica sits on Boyd’s knee and he puts an arm around her while they eat.

Derek hasn’t felt this comfortable around other people in as long as he can remember.

“So,” Erica says. “Road trip to Sacramento tomorrow. You know what that means?”

Derek looks at Boyd.

“She means we’re stopping for In-N-Out,” Boyd says. “Whether you like it or not.”

“That’s fair,” Derek says. He stands up and takes his plate to the sink, and then goes back for Boyd’s and Erica’s when they’ve finished eating.

After lunch, Erica insists they play Monopoly on a set she got at Goodwill. Most of the pieces are missing and have been replaced by pencil toppers, but it’s the most fun Derek’s had in a long time. He remembers playing board games with his family, before the fire. It was just another thing that he and Laura lost. Almost inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and Derek didn’t realise how much he’d missed it until now.

After the game he digs his phone out of the pocket of his leather jacket, braces himself, and turns it back on. He has a bunch of missed calls from Laura, and over thirty text messages. His battery is almost dead, so he digs his charger out of his bag and plugs it in.

They’re halfway through another round of Monopoly when his phone rings.

And… well, it would be too weird to ignore it with Boyd and Erica looking at him expectantly, right?

Derek reaches for it.

It’s a number he doesn’t know, and a chill runs through him.

What if it’s _Kate_? If she’s coming here… what if she’s somehow got his number? What if he answers, and hears her laughing at him again like she did all those years ago?

_“And don’t worry, baby. You won’t have to be sad forever. I’ll get you and your bitch of a sister one day.”_

He hits the button to take the call. “Hello?”

“Is this Derek?” a voice asks. “Derek Hale?”

And just the sound of the voice brings a rush of remembered scent: _Want. Mine. Yes._

“Yes,” he says, numb.

“This is Stiles,” Stiles says. “From the diner? I think—” He sounds panicked, his heartbeat racing. “I think something’s happened to Laura.”

Derek’s blood runs cold.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Parrish hasn’t even been gone for an hour before he’s back, brakes squealing as he pulls his cruiser into the driveway.

“It’s Parrish,” Stiles tells his dad, and hurries to open the front door.

Parrish strides inside, straight into the living room, and doesn’t waste time with pleasantaries. “The fire department got a call to Laura Hale’s place,” he says. “When they got there, they didn’t find any smoke, but there was a smoke canister on the floor, and a busted window. They also found a shit ton of blood on the fire escape, and bullet casings. There’s no sign of any of the Hales.”

 _Laura_.

Stiles almost stumbles, knees going week. He grabs the doorframe to keep himself steady.

Dad holds out his arm, and Parrish helps him to his feet. He turns to look at Stiles. “Kid, get my jacket for me, will you?”

Stiles takes one look at his face, decides that now it not the time to remind him that he’s on sick leave and in absolutely no condition to go wandering around crime scenes, and nods. “I’m coming with you.”

And there must be something of the same determination in his face too, because Dad doesn’t even argue.

 

***

 

Laura.

Where the _fuck_ is Laura?

The loft is empty when they get there. There’s a deputy down in the street guarding the front entrance to the building, and another one around the side under the fire escape.

Stiles, still panting from helping Parrish get Dad up the stairs, steps inside cautiously. One of the loft windows is shattered, and there is glass on the floor. The afternoon sunlight glints off the multitude of shards. Lying near the couch, as though it hit it and then bounced back, is a canister. It looks to Stiles’s untrained eye like a battered tin can, but he realises that’s the smoke canister that Parrish talked about.

Dad steps past him, the rubber tips of his crutches squeaking a little against the floor. “What the hell?”

Someone drove Laura out, Stiles thinks, and was waiting outside for her. Just like someone tried with the rest of the Hales, all those years ago at the house in the Preserve.

“Don’t touch anything,” Dad warns, and Stiles nods as he moves further into the loft.

He listens to Parrish running Dad through the scene, and heads upstairs, careful to keep his hands to himself. The door to Laura’s room is open, and there are pillows on the floor, jammed between the door and the wall. Stiles wonders if she ran here, and tried to block the smoke. Her window is open.

Stiles sticks his head out and looks at the fire escape.

He sees blood spatter on the brick wall, and a pool of it congealed and crusted over on the rusted steps.

He pulls his head back inside and closes his eyes. Takes deep breaths until the urge to vomit passes.

God. Someone has hurt Laura. And Parrish said there were shell casings. Did someone _shoot_ her? He feels dizzy. He makes his way downstairs again, his throat aching and his eyes stinging.

“So, what do we think?” Dad asks Parrish grimly. “Have we contacted the uncle, or the brother?”

“Peter Hale isn’t at home,” Parrish says. “And his phone’s off. We don’t have a contact for Derek Hale.”

“Derek lives here,” Stiles says woodenly. “With Laura. You were right, Dad. Someone’s targeting their whole family.”

“Before we go with that, we need to eliminate everything else first,” Dad says calmly. “The big ones are debts, drugs, and domestic disputes.”

“Laura has money,” Stiles says automatically, thinking of the Hello Kitty backpack still stashed in his room. It’s mostly empty now. “And she doesn’t use drugs. Not even weed.”

Dad gives him a knowing look, and Stiles figures that ‘not even’ is going to come back and haunt him later. Weed might be legal in California now, but Dad’s old school attitudes die hard.

Parrish is checking out the bookshelf.

“What about domestic disputes?” Dad asks. “What about her uncle and her brother?”

“I…” Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t really know. She doesn’t talk about them much, but I never got the impression there were any problems there. She’s really protective of her family. It’s obvious she loves them.”

“A boyfriend?” Dad asks. “An ex?”

“No, she didn’t mention anyone,” Stiles says. “And she’s not seeing anyone right now.”

Parrish turns around, holding up a tiny pair of yellow booties in one gloved hand, and a baby clothes catalogue in the other. “Ah, I think she’s been seeing _someone_.”

“Okay,” Dad says, rubbing his forehead. “So maybe we’re looking at a domestic incident. An angry ex, maybe, or a married man. Could be someone who’s not happy to be asked to pay child support. Stiles, are you sure she didn’t mention any man in her life at all?”

“I…” Stiles feels his stomach swoop. “That’s… I mean…”

“Stiles?” Dad asks, his brow creasing.

Something bad happened here. Something really bad. Laura is in danger—God, she might even be _dead_ —and Stiles needs to tell the truth. This isn’t the way he planned to break it to Dad—he planned to _never_ break it to Dad—but Laura’s life is more important that whatever Dad is going to think of Stiles for doing what he did.

“Laura is pregnant,” Stiles says, his voice rasping. “And the baby’s mine.”

Dad actually staggers, and Stiles rushes forward to help him keep his balance. Dad wrenches away from him. “What the hell are talking about?” His eyes blaze. “You kept something like this from me? That you’ve got a girlfriend, and you’re going to be a _father_? Jesus Christ! You’re _eighteen_  years old!”

“Um.” Stiles swallows, tears springing to his eyes. He steps back again. “It’s not like that!”

Dad is red in the face. He jabs a crutch in Stiles’s direction. “Then what the fuck is it _like_ , Stiles?”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what?” Dad yells. “You didn’t _what_ , Stiles?”

“John,” Parrish says, getting between them and putting a hand on Dad’s chest. “Take a breath.”

Stiles scrubs at his wet cheeks. “She’s not my girlfriend! She’s a _friend_! We didn’t sleep together! She paid me, _okay_? She paid me eight grand so that she could have a baby! I jerked off in fucking jar to pay your hospital bills!”

“You…you did _what_?” Dad stumbles slightly, and Parrish steadies him.

Stiles sees the moment when all the blood rushes out of Dad’s face. Stiles’s stomach lurches, and his hot burst of anger dissolves in his tears. His voice is hardly more than a whisper when he speaks. “We couldn’t pay our bills, Dad.”

“That is not your job, son!”

“Well, who else’s is it?” Stiles asks, his voice cracking. “We’re a team, aren’t we? We’re supposed to be a _team_.”

Dad raises a trembling hand to his face, and covers his eyes for a moment. When he takes his hand away, he’s crying too. “Oh, Stiles.”

Stiles wipes his face again and clears his throat. “So anyway, there’s no angry boyfriend in the picture. There’s just me.”

He watches carefully as Dad struggles to compose himself again, and wonders if Dad will ever be able to look him in the eye after this. This is a huge thing, he _knows_  that, but it wasn’t that long ago that they couldn’t pay their fucking electric bill. They have breathing space now. Stiles gave them that, and he can’t bring himself to regret his decision. He’d make it again, if he had to.

Because it saved them. It kept the roof over their head, and the lights on, and food on the table.

Laura’s offer saved them, and Stiles can’t bring himself to regret taking it.

“And there was never a tutoring job,” Dad says with a sigh.

Stiles shakes his head.

Dad draws a deep breath, and straightens up as much as he can on his crutches. “Okay, well we’ve still got a missing woman, and that’s our priority. Parrish, you’ve called in Kreutzer?”

Kreutzer is the forensics guy from the station. Beacon Hills is small enough that they only have the one.

“He’s on his way,” Parrish says, finally stepping back from Dad. “He was on a day off, up at his cabin, so it’ll take him a while to get here. And we’ve got a trace on Laura’s phone, but it’s not pinging anywhere. She must have it turned off and the removed the SIM.”

Or someone’s done it for her, Stiles thinks.

“Do the same for Peter Hale’s,” Dad says. “Just in case.” He gazes around the loft. “No witnesses?”

Parrish shakes his head. “Just the calls to the fire department, and they were from the next street over.”

“The fire department guys didn’t see anything?”

“Nothing at the scene.”

“Hmm.” Dad nods. “What about on their way? They didn’t pass anyone speeding out of here?”

“I’ll check.” Parrish steps away to use his radio, putting the request in at the station to have someone call and check with the fire department.

Stiles glances at Dad, and then sidles into the kitchen. There’s a screwed up piece of note paper in the otherwise-empty trash, but he leaves it there because he’s not supposed to touch. There’s a takeout menu stuck to the refrigerator, and a blue sticky note underneath it with a smiley face and a date drawn on it.

Jesus.

Stiles feels a jolt of recognition. It’s seven and a half months from now: it must be Laura’s due date.

There are a few bills on the kitchen counter, and an unopened envelope from some charity probably soliciting donations. Stiles hooks the end of his sleeve over his finger and shifts the envelope so he can look at the paperwork underneath. There’s an invoice from a furniture store, and what looks like an itemised receipt from Safeway. Stiles guesses that with her constant night shifts, getting her groceries online is easiest for Laura.

And then he sees the customer name: Derek Hale. And his cell phone number.

“Dad!”

Dad moves into the kitchen. “What is it?”

Stiles points to the invoice. “Derek’s cell phone number.”

Dad peers at the invoice, and meets Stiles’s gaze. “And what do you think the chances are that his phone’s on?”

Stiles shrugs. “Only one way to find out.”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket.

Dad nods. “It’s worth a try.”

 

***

 

“Hello?” The voice at the other end of the line is quiet and cautious.

“Is this Derek?” Stiles asks, his heart thumping wildly. “Derek Hale?”

“Yes.”

“This is Stiles,” Stiles says. “From the diner? I think—I think something’s happened to Laura.”

 

***

 

Derek Hale turns up at the loft in the company of Vernon Boyd. Stiles hasn’t seen Boyd since graduation, and never really knew him very well anyway, but they do the awkward nod thing while Dad and Parrish tell Derek what little they know, and ask him where he’s been.

“He’s been with me since dawn,” Boyd says. “My girlfriend Erica can back that up.”

And Derek—angry, scowly, I-look-like-a-poster-boy-for-serial-killers Derek—suddenly looks so frightened and so vulnerable that Stiles wonders if he really thought Dad and Parrish were going to railroad him. And he thinks he should be a little bit offended on their behalf, but then he wonders what Derek’s life has been life since the fire, and how he’s been hurt so badly in the past that maybe he always expects the worst to happen.

Stiles was the same for a while, after his mom died.

He watches Derek, and Derek’s gaze keeps flicking to him, something strange and compelling in his eyes. They’re the exact same shade as Laura’s, but Laura’s eyes have never stared at him quite so intently, like there’s a whole universe behind them that Stiles can barely glimpse.

“We’ve been trying to get hold of your uncle as well, Derek,” Parrish says. “To see if he can maybe shed some light on anyone who might want to cause problems for your sister.”

Derek swallows. “I need to…” He lifts his head, and narrows his eyes as though he’s concentrating hard. “You said there’s blood?”

“On the fire escape,” Parrish says. “We can’t really be sure—”

“It’s Peter’s blood,” Derek says suddenly. He scowls, and his chest rises and falls heavily. He curls his fingers into fists, and a noise not unlike a rumbling growl escapes him. “It’s not Laura’s. It’s Peter’s. I can _smell_ it!”

“Derek,” Dad says patiently. “Son, you can’t possibly—holy _shit_!”

Stiles’s jaw drops, because what the everlasting _fuck_?

Derek’s eyes are blazing brilliant almost-neon blue.


	13. Chapter 13

Laura blinks her eyes open in the gloom. Her arms and her shoulders hurt. It takes her a moment to realise she can’t move them. They’re chained above her, and her weight is hanging from them. She drags her feet along the floor—grit crunches under the soles of her shoes—and gets them under her. She moves her weight to her legs to ease the pain in her shoulders, and then shakes her aching head to try to shift the curtain of her hair hanging in front of her face.

“It’s always an abandoned industrial hellscape, isn’t it?” Peter asks in an acerbic tone from somewhere nearby. “Never a nice condo, or even someone’s garage. So predictable.”

Laura grunts, nowhere near alert enough to appreciate his sarcasm. Her sluggish brain is still trying to get a fix on what the fuck has happened. She turns her head and peers in his direction.

He’s hanging suspended in the same manner she is—arms wrenched up above him, and his ankles bound in a chain.

They’re in a…a meat locker? The room is dusty, and dark, and it’s not refrigerated now, but it’s clear that’s what it was used for once: there are hooks hanging from the ceiling and old stains on the floor.  

“I made the jump, Uncle Peter,” she murmurs, still not quite understanding how she came to be in this place. “Made it.”

“I know you did, Lulu.” His voice is strained. “I know you did.”

She remembers jumping.

She remembers a sudden burst of pain in her chest.

She remembers more pain after that—hot, acid, so bad it flared white against her vision—and someone laughing as they pressed burning ashes into the hole in her chest.

She drops her chin to her chest now, and sees the bloodied, tattered hole in her favourite t-shirt. The skin underneath it is unblemished though. She feels a little weak still, from her exposure to the wolfsbane, but she knows there’s none in her system still.

She was shot, but she’s been healed. And she knows it’s not a mercy.

She looks at Peter again. His sweater and his jeans are pocked with holes, stained with blood, but he’s not hurt anymore either.

“Why?” she asks.

Peter always knows how to follow the train of her thought. “I can only assume they want Derek too, and they know that if they break his pack bonds, he’ll realise we’re dead, and not come back looking for us.”

They don’t know he left, Laura thinks. They don’t know he ran. They think he’ll come searching for his pack like any beta would.

“Derek doesn’t even feel the pack bonds like I do.” Laura’s throat is dry.

“He should though,” Peter says. “A beta should.”

But then Derek’s been an omega in everything but name for so, so long, hasn’t he? For the first time since she faced up to how she’s failed him as an alpha, Laura almost feels glad. Because if Derek can’t feel the bonds the way he’s supposed to, then maybe he’ll just keep running.

Maybe Laura’s failure will save him.

 

***

 

It’s hours before anyone comes. Laura listens, and sometimes she can hear the faint sound of the hunters’ voices, muffled through distance and several heavy doors. She hears men talking, and one woman. It can only be Kate Argent.

Laura’s eyes sting with angry tears when she thinks of how this woman raped her little brother when he was just sixteen, and manipulated him into giving her the information she needed to murder their pack. She destroyed them. She burned them to the ground, and now she’s back to salt the earth.

Laura thinks of the tiny life growing inside her, little more than a hummingbird’s thrumming heartbeat at the moment, and of eyes that may never open. She wonders if her baby would have had the green eyes of a Hale, or Stiles’s long lashes and burnt-caramel gaze.

“Don’t you dare,” Peter murmurs. His expression sharpens as he turns his head to look at her. “I can smell your fear, and fear is a good thing, but only when you use it to fight, not to cringe. We’re still alive, and you’re still the alpha. Be afraid, but be angry too. Be angry to the fucking _end_ , and take down as many of your enemies as you can.”

Laura swallows and nods.

 

***

 

Kate Argent is a smirk and a swagger and a sharp-eyed predator. She walks into the meat locker, her boot heels clicking on the concrete floor, and turns on the blazing lights. After hours in the gloom, Laura squints in the sudden brightness, but forces her chin up to meet Kate’s gaze.

Laura is the alpha.

There’s an old man with Kate, his white hair balding. He’s wearing Sears jeans and a windbreaker. He looks like someone’s harmless old grandpa, except Laura knows better than to mistake him as anything but dangerous. It’s Gerard Argent, Kate’s father, and very probably the architect of all Kate’s actions.

“Well,” the old man says in his scratchy voice. “Laura Hale.”

“ _Alpha_  Hale,” Laura corrects, and hears Peter’s low growl of approval.

Gerard chuckles.

Kate circles Laura. “Where’s Derek? Where’s that cute little brother of yours?”

Laura doesn’t miss the way Gerard’s mouth turns down in distaste at the reminder his daughter seduced a werewolf.

“Not here,” Laura says.

“Aw.” Kate pouts. “He’s missing all the fun!”

Peter’s chains rattle as he readjusts his position. “Don’t worry, Kate. If you’re still interested in werewolf dick, then I’ve got a nice big one you can choke on.”

Kate whirls on him, pulling a firearm from her thigh holster and jabbing it in his stomach.

Laura watches, breath catching in her throat.

Peter’s upper lip draws back in something that’s not quite a snarl, not like a smirk. He might be hanging chained and helpless, and completely at Kate Argent’s mercy, but he’s not cowed for a second. He’s too much of an asshole for that, and Laura thinks that she’s never loved him more fiercely.

“Though I understand if I’m not your type,” Peter says. “You prefer boys who aren’t old enough to vote, hmm?”

“Whatever it takes, dog,” Kate says, her eyes narrow.

Peter shrugs, and his smirk widens. “If we’re dogs, then you’re a dog-fucker.”

Gerard Argent growls, his face going red, and Kate looks at him quickly—a flash of something that’s almost insecurity passing over her features. A sore spot, an old point of contention between father and daughter, and Peter honed in on it immediately.

Because of course Gerard Argent is exactly the sort of bigot who thinks nothing of murdering entire werewolf packs, but heaven forbid his daughter spreads her legs for one of them.

Peter’s eyes flash blue as he leans closer to Kate. “ _Bitch_. Dog-fucker bitch.”

Kate’s jaw clenches, and her grip tightens on the firearm pressed into his gut.

Peter lifts his chin, fearless, like he doesn’t even notice.

Laura knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s doing what he did back at the loft. He’s making himself a shield. He’s goading Kate, drawing her anger, in an attempt to protect his alpha, and to protect the cub she’s carrying. It will be a vain attempt in the end, Laura knows, but this is what he does. Her uncle and her left hand. This is who he _is_.

“Where’s Derek?” Kate demands, sliding the barrel of the firearm up to his sternum, and then back down to his abdomen again.

Peter’s smirk grows. “Not here, dog-fucker.”

“Well then,” Kate says. “I guess we really only need his alpha for bait, don’t we?”

She pulls the trigger.

 

***

 

Peter’s shirt is soaked in black blood. The wolfsbane is poisoning him, preventing his body from healing. Laura can imagine the black spider’s web of veins on his skin, and knows that when it reaches his heart he’ll die. Whatever strain of wolfsbane Kate used, it’s slow-acting.

That’s not a mercy, Laura knows, and it wasn’t intended as one.

Kate wants Peter to die slowly, and in pain.

His mind keeps racing, even as his body fails him.

“They’re waiting for Derek,” he murmurs. “That gives you time, Lulu. Maybe there’s an advantage there. Be angry. Remember to be angry.”

He shudders as the poison blackens his blood.

“I’m sorry. They were supposed to come after me. I have so many fucking trip wires in my apartment it’s like living in a cat’s cradle.”

Laura whispers to him that she loves him, that she doesn’t blame him. She’s not sure if he even registers the words.

“If the Argents have a weak link, it’s Christopher.” He draws a shaking breath. “He was always the only one of them who didn’t twist their code. He can’t know about this. He wouldn’t approve. It’s possible one of the other hunters knows him. If you get the chance to speak to one of them, ask them to contact Chris. Tell them you have information for Chris’s ears only.” He shivers, hands clenching and unclenching in the shackles above his head. “It’s a long shot, but maybe…”

“Maybe,” Laura whispers back, knowing that it won’t work, but also that Peter needs this. He needs to die hoping that he’s at least left her with a faint chance.

“Sow discord,” Peter says, his voice straining. “They hate us. Remind them what Kate did. How low she went in their eyes. Dirty dog-fucker. Make them spit on her reputation. Might not help you, but…”

But it might hurt Kate, some indistinct day in the future, and that might be the only consolation Laura gets in the end.

“If it comes to the worst…” Peter squeezes his eyes shut. “If it comes to the worst, Derek will be alpha. Away from here, and he can build a pack, and maybe it won’t be the end of all of us. Maybe one day there will be new Hale pups, hmm?”

“Yeah,” Laura says, tears sliding down her cheeks. What about _her_ pup though? What about the tiny heartbeat inside her? Doesn’t it deserve a chance to live?

But this is what Peter needs. He needs that sliver of hope that, despite everything, the Hale pack might continue. Not the one they had, and not the one they were left with, but some nebulous concept of a future pack, with Derek as alpha, and Derek’s children. Laura can’t imagine it, and she doesn’t want to—not at the expense of her child—but she won’t steal that image from Peter if that’s all he’s clinging onto now.

“I taught you to run, Lulu, remember?” he asks, his voice cracking. “I taught you to run, even though you hated me for it.”

“I remember,” Laura whispers to him. “And I never hated you.”

Peter shudders, all the tendons in his neck tensing, and then slumps in his chains. His face is wet with tears. Tremors run through his body, and he makes small, hurt noises before he slips into silence for a long time.

Laura shifts her weight from foot to foot and tries to ease the pain in her shoulders. She wishes she was close enough to touch him, so that she had more than empty words to comfort him with. She wishes she could take his pain.

“I’m so sorry,” Peter whispers at last, and then, before Laura can answer, he says: “I’m so sorry, Talia.”

Laura’s heart clenches.

Peter turns his face to her, but she knows it’s not her she’s seeing.

Laura has failed as an alpha on so many levels, but here, in this moment, she can be the alpha Peter deserves. She can be Talia Hale.

“A left hand should never outlive their alpha. But, Talia, I just didn’t die.” His chest rises and falls heavily. “I wanted to, but I just didn’t die.”

“No,” Laura says, trying to keep her voice steady. “No, Peter, you stayed alive because you were still needed. Derek and Laura still needed you.”

 “I’m so sorry, Talia.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” She blinks, and for a moment Peter vanishes behind a blurred screen of tears. “You are the best left hand an alpha could want. And you are the best brother a sister could ever hope for.”

“Talia…” Peter coughs, and a thin line of black fluid spills from the corner of his mouth. “I’m scared, Tally.”

“Don’t be scared, Peter,” Laura tells him. “I’m waiting for you. Everyone’s here waiting for you. You’ve been so strong, but you can rest now. You can let go whenever you want.”  

Peter nods, and his eyes flutter closed.

Laura watches him through her tears, listening to the erratic beat of his heart, and dreading the inevitable moment that she no longer hears it, and she’s left here all alone.


	14. Chapter 14

“Derek,” Sheriff Stilinski says in the same patient tone he probably reserves for crazy people, and Derek feels his scant control slipping even further. “Son, you can’t possibly—holy _shit_!”

It’s too late to pretend that nobody saw his eyes flash. Derek takes a step back, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. The Sheriff is staring at him, jaw dropped, and Deputy Parrish is doing what every cop is trained to do when they’re presented with danger—he’s reaching for his firearm.

Derek is a trapped animal.

He takes another step back, aware of Boyd moving away from him.

That  _hurts_. He knows it shouldn’t, but it hurts.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says, to Boyd, to the sheriff, to the missing heartbeat that is Laura, to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

And then his senses are flooded with Stiles’s scent, and Stiles is standing beside him.

Derek lifts his gaze, aware that his eyes are still glowing.

Stiles’s eyes are wide, his mouth open, like some little kid staring in awe at a magic trick. His hand twitches as though he’s about to reach out, but thinks better of it. “Derek, how are you doing that?”

“Stiles,” the sheriff says, his voice steady, but his heart racing. “Stiles, step away from Derek, son.”

“Nobody…” Stiles still hasn’t looked away from Derek. “Nobody’s going to shoot anybody, right?”

“No,” the sheriff says. “Nobody is going to shoot anybody.”

Parrish’s shaking hand rests on the clasp of his holster.

Stiles steps back from Derek.

“That’s good,” the sheriff says. “Everybody’s staying calm, and nobody’s going to hurt anyone else.” He stares at Derek. “Now maybe you can tell me what the _fuck_ is going on here, Derek, what happened to your sister, and what the hell sort of drugs you’ve been taking that can make your eyes do _that_.”

“I’m not on drugs, sir.” Derek’s fear threatens to choke him, but there’s nowhere left to hide now. He can’t run. Not when Laura and Peter are in danger. All he can do is reveal the truth and hope that it’s not a death sentence for his surviving pack, the way it was a death sentence that time he whispered his all his secrets to Kate. “I’m a werewolf.”

In the sudden silence that follows, Stiles says, “Fuck. That didn’t even make your list, did it, Dad?”

 

*** 

 

The sheriff sits down on the couch, smelling of discomfort and old, familiar pain, and listens as Derek haltingly tells him about werewolves, about the fire, and about hunters. He doesn’t tell the sheriff what Kate did, and what _he_ did. There are still some things he can’t unburden himself of, especially in a room full of staring faces.

Sheriff Stilinski’s expressions are a discordant symphony as he listens: scepticism, shock, fear, sympathy and, finally, a sort of unhappy acceptance.

“You’re a werewolf,” he says at last. “And your family were werewolves. And Laura and Peter are werewolves, and they’ve been kidnapped by werewolf hunters.”

Derek nods anxiously.

“I mean…” The sheriff rubs a hand over his forehead. “Stiles, have I been taking too many painkillers?”

“Nope,” Stiles says. “I heard it too.”

The sheriff looks to Parrish, and Parrish nods warily.

"I always knew there was something weird about this town,” the sheriff says.

Parrish nods again.

“Derek’s a good guy,” Boyd says at last. He’s moved closer again, and reaches out and claps a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “He’s not…” His face twists up with the word. “He’s not some kind of _monster_.”

“Neither is Laura,” Stiles says, and Derek feels a burst of relief followed immediately by a jealous sting. “I mean, this is all crazy, but the Hales are the victims here, right?”

“Our pack never hurt anyone,” Derek says numbly, and only hopes the sheriff believes him.

“Okay,” the sheriff says, nodding. “Okay, so the priority is getting Laura and Peter back. You’re certain he was taken too?”

“It’s his blood on the fire escape,” Derek says. “I can smell it.”

“I feel like I’m taking a lot on faith here, son,” Stilinski says. “Fuck my life.” Then he rallies. “Argent, you said? Parrish, wasn’t that licence plate I gave you registered to an Argent? Get an APB out on that, will you? If anyone sees them, get them to pull them over, have a chat, find out where they’re staying. The usual dumb local cop shtick. We don’t want to tip them off.”

“Yes, sir.” Parrish steps outside to use his radio, but Derek can still hear every word.

“This is _insane_ ,” Sheriff Stilinski mutters. Apparently he hasn’t rallied as much as Derek assumed. “Okay, Derek, you’re the expert here. Do you know of anywhere they’d take Laura and Peter?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay. And—hell, there’s no good way to say this. Are you sure they’d keep them alive?”

“Yes, sir.” Derek swallows. “Until they get me too. We have a _bond_...” He falters over that. “We’re supposed to have what’s called a pack bond. I should be able to feel if they’re alive or not.”

“And you can’t?” the sheriff asks.

“No,” Derek says faintly. “The bond isn’t as strong as it should be.”

Stiles makes a small sympathetic noise at that, and Derek’s heart skips a beat. He steals a glance at Stiles.

“Well, we’ll get that APB out,” Sheriff Stilinski says. “And wait and see if we ping their phones. Other than that, and patrolling a few of the likely spots around town—empty buildings, warehouses, and the like—I don’t know how much we can do with what we’ve got.”

Parrish comes back inside. “The APB’s out, and I’ve got a possible cell phone number for Gerard Argent.”

“Can we get that triangulated?”

“I’ve already put the request in.”

“Good.” Sheriff Stilinski nods. “Now, unless anyone’s got any other ideas, we wait to get a hit.”

From the silence, Derek guesses that nobody else has got any other ideas.

 

***

 

Sheriff Stilinski orders everyone out of the loft when the forensics guy turns up, and Boyd drives Derek to the Stilinskis’ house.

“Werewolves,” he says once, giving Derek the side-eye. “Jesus.”

Derek glares at the windshield.

“Man, I thought you were just really antisocial,” Boyd says at last.

“Oh,” Derek says. “No, I’m that as well.”

 

***

 

Stiles’s enticing scent, unsurprisingly, permeates the Stilinskis’ house. It’s a balm and torture at the same time, but Derek is too anxious about Laura and Peter to make any room for the particular crises that is Stiles Stilinski. He even manages a faint smile of thanks when Stiles presses a mug of warm tea into his shaking hands.

He sits across from the sheriff in the living room, and the sheriff goes through everything again.

“Werewolves,” he says more than once, shaking his head as though to clear it. And then: “And this is why they targeted you? This is why your family died?”

Derek nods.

“I don’t know shit about werewolves, son,” Sheriff Stilinski says, “but God knows I’ve got no patience for murderous bigots. I didn’t know your family well, but they were good people, and I’m sorry this happened to them, and to you.”

Derek jolts in surprise, and Stiles flashes him a small, comforting smile. 

Sheriff Stilinski spends a lot of time on the phone with Deputy Parrish, giving out both orders and advice in equal measure as Parrish runs the investigation from the station.

Boyd waits around for a while, and then takes a worried call from Erica, wondering why he’s been gone so long.

“I’m really sorry,” he says, “but she sounded a bit off. I should go.”

“Go,” Derek tells him. “Thank you, for everything.”

“Hey, if you need anything else, you call me, okay?”

Derek nods. “What are you going to tell Erica?”

Boyd shrugs. “It’s not my secret to tell, man. I get that this isn’t something you share with people, and I know I just happened to be there, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna treat it any differently than any other confidence, you know? I won’t break your trust.”

“You can tell her,” Derek says. He can’t imagine that Boyd and Erica have any secrets, and, for better or for worse, he doesn’t want to become one between them.

Boyd holds his gaze. “Thank you, Derek.”

Derek nods, and watches him leave.

Mom always said they had to guard who they told, but Derek’s already broken that rule before, hasn’t he? He told Kate. She already knew, he realised later, but he told her _everything_. He told her who’d be in the house that night. He told her about the tunnels and where they came out. He might as well have lit the match himself.

So now Boyd knows, and Erica will, and Stiles and his father know, and Deputy Parrish knows, and Derek can’t bring himself to care. If Laura comes back to him alive, he’ll take responsibility for having told their secret. He’d already left the pack anyway, hadn’t he? What’s the weight of one more disappointment? And if she’s still alive to hate him for it, then he’ll take it gladly.

When the tense atmosphere inside the house becomes too cloying, Derek goes and sits on the back porch and stares into the little bedraggled garden.

He hears the back screen door squeak, and then Stiles joins him on the steps.

“So,” Stiles says. “Werewolves.”

Derek stares at him.

“Sorry, this is just really crazy, you know?” Stiles wrinkles his nose. “Like, you spend your whole life thinking the world is one way, and then it just gets flipped on its head in the space of a day. I’ve got so many questions for Laura when she gets back!”

He says it with a sort of desperate hope; the same desperate hope that’s clawing in Derek’s gut at the moment. The desperate hope he’s trying to drown, because he knows to expect the worst.

“You stood in front of me today at the loft,” Derek murmurs. “When everyone else was freaking out.”

“Oh, I’ve always been a contrary little shit,” Stiles says brightly. “Just ask my dad.” His expression softens. “Seriously, though. I mean, you’re Laura’s _brother_.”

Derek pretends his doesn’t feel his heart sink a little at those words.

“And Laura is like the coolest person I’ve ever met,” Stiles continues blithely. “I mean, Laura’s not scary even though she’s a werewolf, except when some asshole doesn’t tip, so why would you be scary just because you’re a werewolf too?”

Derek nods.

Stiles chews his bottom lip for a moment. “She’s gonna be okay,” he says decisively. “Laura and your uncle. And the baby. They’re all gonna be okay.”

He reaches out and laces his fingers through Derek’s, and squeezes.

Derek closes his eyes and tries not to breathe in his scent. He wants nothing more than to lean into Stiles, to hold him and to be held. He wants like he’s never wanted before, and he has never felt less deserving of anything in his life. He wants to believe it when Stiles tells him everyone will be okay. He wants to believe that Stiles cares for him too. He wants, jealously, to believe that Stiles cares for him in a different way than he does. A singular way.

He wants too much, and it all feels too impossible to even dare to imagine.

He squeezes Stiles’s hand back, and tries to tell himself that this is enough. If he gets Laura and Peter back, then this is enough.

Stiles’s smile is so full of warmth and hope that it makes him want to cry.

“Stiles!” Sheriff Stilinski calls from inside the house. “Derek!”

Stiles scrambles to his feet and heads back inside the house, Derek following.

The sheriff is on his feet, crutches under his arms, struggling into his jacket. “We’ve got a hit on Gerard’s phone. Parrish is coming to get me, and we’re going to see what we can find.”

“Dad…”

“Stay here,” the sheriff says sternly, and then looks to Derek. “Both of you, stay here. I shouldn’t even be going myself.”

“I was just going to say that!” Stiles exclaims.

“But I am,” Stilinski says firmly, “because I’m still the sheriff, and this is my job, and because Laura Hale is carrying my grandchild. Don’t you think I’ve forgotten about that, kiddo.”

“Dad…” Stiles swallows. “That’s not…” He sighs. “Be safe, okay? Just be safe. These people are dangerous.”

“You think this is my first day out of the academy, son?” Stilinski hugs him. “I’m taking a SWAT team with me.”

Stiles zips his dad’s jacket up for him. “You don’t have a SWAT team!”

“No, but Redding does,” the sheriff says, tightening his grip on his crutches, “and their commander owes me a favor. And they’re already on the way.”

“In that case,” Stiles says with a forced smile that really doesn’t disguise his worry at all, “go and kick some ass.”

The sheriff snorts, and heads for the front door, his crutches tap-tap-tapping on the floor.


	15. Chapter 15

Waiting is the worst. Stiles has never been a patient guy, and having a sheriff for a father hasn’t made things any easier. When Stiles was a kid, after he lost his mom, he could sometimes work himself all the way up into a panic attack, thinking of all the terrible things that could happen to his dad once he left the house to go to work. And then, of course, one day it did happen. One day Stiles got pulled out of class to be told his dad had been shot, and they didn’t know if he was going to make it.

Jesus.

The last eight months have been stressful as fuck, and today really isn’t helping.

But at least today Stiles isn’t all alone. He’s got Derek with him, and focussing on Derek gives him something to do apart from panic.

He microwaves some pizza pockets he’s been keeping hidden in the very back of the freezer, and forces Derek to sit on the couch and eat one.

“It’ll be okay,” he tells him for what feels like the hundredth time, and with a lot more confidence than he actually feels.

Derek gives him the side eye. “I can hear your heartbeat, you know. I can tell you’re lying.”

“What?” Stiles blinks. “Okay, so first of all, if my heart rate is elevated it’s because I’m scared, not because I’m lying. Lying would be a deliberate attempt to hide the truth. Second of all, you can _hear_   heartbeats?”

Derek nods.

Stiles blinks as he processes the reality of something as crazy as that. “How the fuck do you _sleep_?”

“You learn to filter stuff out,” Derek says, a slight tug at the corner of his mouth like he’s trying not to react to Stiles’s wide-eyed curiosity. “Everyone does that though, even regular people. We just do it more.”

“Wow.” Stiles ruminates on that for a moment. “So, like, if there was a mouse in the walls, would you be able to hear that?”

“Probably.” For a moment it looks like Derek might actually smile, but then he abruptly ducks his head again, as though he’s caught himself. His expression shutters again.

 “Dude, you’re amazing.” He offers Derek what he hopes is an encouraging smile. “I’d love to know more about you and your body and stuff.”

Derek’s eyebrows shoot up.

“That came out wrong!” Stiles’s face burns as he very much does not think about Derek’s body specifically. And in detail. He does _not_. “I mean, I’d love to know more about what werewolves can do, and how you’re different from the rest of us, if you’re cool talking about it.” He swallows. “Sorry, my mouth runs ahead of my brain a lot of the time. Also, I have ADHD, so that’s saying something, because my brain is also all over the place, and it becomes this whole mouth-brain vicious circle thing.”

Usually when Stiles word-vomits all over a virtual stranger like that, they nod politely and attempt to extricate themselves from the conversation as cleanly as possible. But Derek’s holding his gaze, and his expression is open and soft and somehow strangely fond, like Stiles is a revelation. And the good kind of revelations, not the Bible kind.

It makes something fierce and protective uncurl inside Stiles. It makes him want to stand between Derek and the world, and be his armor. But Stiles isn’t really big enough for that, is he? It won’t stop him from trying though.

“When I as younger,” Stiles says, “this was the worst part. The waiting. Like if Dad got a call in the middle of the night, I’d know it was a big deal, because, well, when they wake the sheriff up in the middle of the night it’s usually a big deal. And I would always try to stay awake until he got home again, because what if I fell asleep again and something happened, and I’d always know that I hadn’t even cared enough to stay up for him?” He picks at the pizza pocket crumbs on the plate, and shrugs. “But at some point I realised I couldn’t do that anymore, you know? That whatever was going to happen was going to happen anyway, and it had nothing to do with me, and being awake or asleep wouldn’t change a damn thing. So, like, we can sit here and worry, or we can sit here and I can ramble at you and ask you questions about werewolves, and whatever happens will happen anyway.”

Derek nods slightly, like Stiles is actually making sense, which again isn’t the sort of reaction Stiles is used to from people he barely knows. Stiles is very much an acquired taste.

“So I’m going to choose to ramble and ask questions,” he says. “And just so you know, that doesn’t mean I’m not also not going to be freaking the fuck out for my dad, and for Laura and your uncle, and for…”

It hits him suddenly. The baby has been such a nebulous concept up until now, even knowing that Laura is pregnant. But it’s still real, isn’t it? A _baby_. And a part of Stiles thinks wildly that there is no _practical_  difference between a baby who is never born and some invented human being pulled entirely from the imagination—they are both people who fail to exist— but that’s not really true, is it? He _feels_  it. It wouldn’t hurt like this if the baby was just some hypothetical human being.

“And for the baby,” Derek finishes for him, softly.

“Yeah.” Stiles swallows and it hurts. He flashes Derek a shaky smile. “So yeah, fucking  _werewolves_ , huh? What is that about?”

Derek returns his smile, and reaches out and takes his hand. “You can ask me whatever you want to distract us both, Stiles.”

“Do you turn into a real wolf?” Stiles blurts out. “Or just like a super hairy and kind of unconvincing Lon Chaney Jr.?”  

“I’m very convincing,” Derek says with a hesitant smile that grows when Stiles laughs. “We have two shifted forms. We call one of them the beta shift. It’s with claws, and hair, but it’s still basically human-shaped.”

“Cool,” Stiles breathes. “So cool!”

“And…and most of us can shift into a proper wolf form too,” Derek says, but there’s something guarded in his tone.

“Most of you?”

“I can’t,” Derek says, his tone clipped. “I haven’t been able to, since… Since the fire.”

“Oh, that really sucks.” Stiles squeezes Derek’s hand. “Do you know why?”

Derek looks away. “My pack bond isn’t strong enough.”

“Because you lost your family?” Stiles asks softly.

Derek shrugs, still looking away. “Laura can still do it.”

“I’m really sorry, Derek,” Stiles says.

“It’s just a shift,” Derek tells the floor.

“Yeah, I guess. Seems like you miss it though.”

Derek looks back at him, eyes wide. “I do.”

Stiles leans in closer, knocking their shoulders together. “Maybe you’ll get it back one day. What can you do to make your pack bond stronger again?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll bet we can figure something out,” Stiles says. “I’ll bet you can do there werewolf equivalent of group exercises and trust falls, and all that lame shit they make you do at camp. But cooler! Because _werewolves_.”

He’s talking out of his ass again, but it wrings a tiny smile from Derek, and Stiles might be a little bit in love with that smile. It transforms Derek’s whole face, and Stiles feels a rush of warm pride at being the one who put it there. Okay, so he thought Derek was a tweaker the first time he saw him, but he’s not. He’s a guy who’s been beaten down by all the bad shit that’s happened in his life, and at some point—at _this_   point—that’s enough. Stiles might have absolutely no control over whatever happens today to Laura and to Peter and to Dad and to Parrish, but he can do _this_ , right? He can make sure that, whatever it is, Derek doesn’t have to face it alone.

“Okay,” he says, forcing lightness into his tone, “so how about you show me your claws, Mr. Chaney Jr.?”

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t just have claws—he has fangs as well, and Stiles has to force himself not to reach out and touch them the same way he did the claws. There’s a line, right? And sticking his fingers in another guy’s mouth is probably crossing it.

He follows the curve of Derek’s mouth with his gaze, biting his own lip when he sees the way Derek’s fang digs into the plump flesh.

Derek catches him staring, and Stiles feels the heat rising in his face.

“What else can you do?” Stiles asks him.

Derek glowers, his heavy eyebrows tugging together, and then suddenly coarse, dark hair is sprouting from his cut-glass cheekbones, and his forehead transforms into a thick ridges brow that would be the envy of a Neanderthal. His eyebrows vanish completely somewhere in the process, but a deep widow’s peak compensates for the loss.

Stiles lets out a startled laugh, and this time he can’t keep his hand to himself at all. He traces Derek’s ridged brow, his pointed ears, and then runs his fingers down his wolfy sideburns. Derek turns his head into Stiles’s touch, like a cat, and rubs the side of his face against his fingertips. His eyes shine brilliant blue again, and Stiles wants to laugh at how crazy this is, and how Derek is rumbling like a cat as well.

“Are you sure you’re even a wolf?” he teases. “And not a little kitty cat?”

Derek snaps at his fingertips, and Stiles laughs and pulls his hand away.

“You’re amazing though,” he says, taking Derek’s hand in his, and pressing the pads of his fingers against the tips of Derek’s claws. “When I was a little kid I used to believe the world was magic for way longer than I should have, you know?”

Derek’s throat bobs as he swallows, and Stiles wonders if he can even talk in this form.

“But look at you!” Stiles says. “Holy shit. Look at you!”

Derek rumbles again. 

 

 

***

 

The minutes tick slowly away towards the hour, and the tension in Stiles winds tighter and tighter. He doesn’t even know what’s happening, and the not knowing just drives his anxiety higher. He keeps checking his phone every thirty seconds until Derek takes it off him firmly and sets it down on the coffee table just out of reach.

Stiles flashes him an apologetic smile and leans back again. They’re sitting close on the couch, shoulders pressed together, and Stiles leans his head on Derek’s shoulder. Is that weird? He doesn’t even fucking care at this point, because he needs the closeness, okay? And then Derek shifts, and Stiles is about to flail upright again and apologise, but Derek isn’t trying to get rid of him. Instead, Derek lifts his arm and brings it back down again around Stiles, like it’s totally not weird at all, and Stiles exhales slowly. Just two bros cuddling, right? But there actually are extenuating circumstances, and it’s dumb to feel so awkward about this, because why shouldn’t two guys get their snuggle on when they both need a bit of emotional support? It’s only weird because society is fucked up.

Still, Stiles can’t help but notice that Derek smells good. He smells of warmth and soft cotton and some sort of body spray that Stiles doesn’t recognise. And he also can’t help but notice that the chest he’s resting his head against is incredibly well-defined.

God.

Stiles is such a creeper.

He feels a tickle of warm breath against the shell of his ear, and realises that he’s not the only creeper in this scenario. Is Derek smelling his hair? 

Stiles turns his head, and Derek flinches back, and they both reach a silent gentlemen’s agreement not to mention they were smelling each other. At least Stiles thinks that Derek’s suddenly pink ears mean that he’s agreeing without words that they will never speak of this again.

But Derek’s arm is still around him, so Stiles reaches up and curls his fingers around Derek’s wrist to hold him there.

He’s okay with never talking about this again.

But right now? They both need it.

 

***

 

Stiles blinks himself awake when Derek moves. They’re still cuddling on the couch, and Stiles is attached to Derek’s shirt by a thin string of drool. Gross. He levers himself upright.

“Sleep okay?” Derek says. His face is back to normal now, his eyes green instead of luminescent blue.

“I was just resting my eyes,” Stiles grumbles at him. He reaches for his phone, and squints at the screen. He hasn’t missed any calls or messages. “

“Whatever happens today,” Derek says. “Thank you.”

He sounds vulnerable again, and scared.

“Hey.” Stiles reaches out and catches Derek’s hand, and settles back down beside him. He’s not letting Derek go yet. “Whatever happens, we’ll look out for each other, okay? I drooled on your shirt, Derek. We’re totally bros for life now!”

He thinks that should make Derek laugh, and wonders why it doesn’t.

They continue to wait.


	16. Chapter 16

When the shouting starts, Laura has no idea what’s going on.

_“Police! Get on the floor! Get down on the floor!”_

She hears yelling, and shots fired, along with the pop and fizz of what might be a flash grenade? And then the door to the meat locker is wrenched open with a metallic scream, and the beams from flashlights bob on the walls. Laura squints, and smells cordite and smoke and hot metal.

“Clear,” says one of the guys in full body armor and mask, and Laura blinks and possibly misses a few minutes.

“I’ve got them,” someone else says. “I’ve got them.”

Laura hears the scrape of metal against metal, and tries not to cry out in pain as her shoulders are wrenched back and forth. She blinks through her tears at the man standing in front of her holding a pair of bolt cutters.

“Okay,” the man says. He’s young, with brownish-blonde hair, and he’s wearing a bulletproof vest stamped with “POLICE” in big white letters. “I’m gonna take your weight, okay?”

And Laura has no idea who the fuck he is, but she stumbles forward into his capable hold when her arms are finally released.

“Okay,” the guy says again, easing Laura down onto the floor.

And she howls, she thinks, more like a frightened child than a wolf, as the circulation returns to her arms and her blood burns like acid.

She watches as the guy does the same for Peter, except Peter doesn’t make a sound.

She hears a strange scrape-and-tap sound, and looks up as a man on crutches appears in the doorway.

“We’ve got about five minutes,” he says to the man crouching beside Peter. He turns his gaze on Laura. “I’m John Stilinski, the sheriff. You must be Laura Hale.”

She nods, and then shuffles on her ass over toward Peter. “Peter? Peter?”

The younger guy presses his fingers into Peter’s throat. “He’s got a pulse. We need the paramedics.”

“No!” Laura tears Peter’s shirt open around the bullet hole. “No, I need, I need one of their bullets! I know it sounds crazy but—”

“But werewolves,” John Stilinski says, and Laura is too wrung out to even flinch at the fact that the sheriff somehow _knows_. “Parrish, go get a bullet.”

The younger guy scrambles to his feet and hurries away.

The sheriff tap-scrapes closer. “What can I do?”

Laura grasps Peter’s hand and shakes her head. “I just… I just need the bullet.”

The sheriff stands there awkwardly while they wait.

“Peter,” Laura whispers to him. “Peter, hold on, please. I know I said you could go, but please, hold on for just a few more minutes.”

Parrish returns with a clip, and empties it into his hand. He kneels down beside Laura, and holds the bullets out to her.

“A lighter,” she says. “I need a lighter!”

She’s never done this. She’s never had to, but she knows how. She remembers Peter telling her when she was younger. Always telling her all this stuff that Mom thought was inappropriate for the kids to listen to, but Laura soaked it up precisely because Mom disapproved. She thought Peter was being a disobedient shit, just trying to get a rise out of his sister and alpha, but she knows better now. He was training her, wasn’t he? Training her for a day when the worst might happen and she needed to know how to do this.

Parrish looks at her helplessly.

The sheriff winces as he shifts his weight, and digs into the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out a cheap plastic lighter.

“Don’t tell Stiles,” he mutters, and tosses it down.

Parrish catches it and hands it to Laura.

Laura turns her face away and summons her beta shift. She digs her claws into Peter’s wound, searching for the bullet, and removes it with a squelching sound that makes Parrish shudder. Then she takes a new bullet and cracks the casing open with her teeth, and lets the shift fade again. She’s aware of Parrish staring, but she can’t look at him now. She tips the powder into her cupped hand, and takes the lighter. Her numb thumb slips on the wheel once before she gets the flame to catch, and then, when the powder is burning at last, she slams her hand against the wound in Peter’s gut, and pushes the powder in.

Peter roars, his face twisting and transforming, and his spine arching off the floor. Laura holds him down as the black lines in his veins begin to fade and recede, and then helps him roll onto his side as he vomits out the rest of the poison. He lies there, gasping, eyes wide, and Laura leans down and presses her face against his shoulder.

“Lulu,” he says at last, his voice faint, but his heartbeat strong.

“Holy shit,” the sheriff says.

Laura sobs into Peter’s shoulder.

“Lulu,” Peter says, soft and regretful. “Lulu, we have to move.”

Laura sits back, wiping her face.

“Okay,” John Stilinski says. “I’ve got a SWAT team securing the building, and we need to get this sorted out before they get back in here. Because what we have here are two people with bullet holes in their clothes, and no bullet holes in their bodies. That’s gonna raise some questions that nobody wants to answer. Now I don’t think they got a real good look at you when they cleared the room, and we don’t want to give them one outside, right?”

Laura nods, and looks down at her shirt. And then she looks at Parrish, who’s unfastening his bulletproof vest, setting it down on the floor, and unbuttoning his khaki uniform shirt.

It takes her a moment to catch up: this is a cover-up. The sheriff and Parrish have saved their lives, and now they’re covering up the fact they’re not human.

Laura strips her shirt off, and exchanges it for Parrish’s white undershirt. It smells a little of sweat and whatever body spray he uses. Parrish tugs her shirt on, grimacing at the dried blood, and then buttons his uniform shirt up over it, hiding it from view.

Peter and the sheriff make the same swap.

“Jesus,” the sheriff says when he’s wearing Peter’s shirt. “You should have more holes in you than Swiss cheese.”

Peter is still weak, and unsteady on his feet, but he manages a smirk as he helps the sheriff put his jacket back on and zip it up to cover Peter’s ruined, bloody shirt. “Suits you,” he says.

“I prefer something with fewer bullet holes,” Stilinski tells him wryly.

Peter glances at his crutches. “Well. I can imagine.” He helps the sheriff replace his heavy bulletproof vest. “What do you need us to tell your colleagues?”

“That you don’t know anything,” the sheriff says. “You don’t know why they kidnapped you, and you don’t know what they were intending. You leave the rest to me and Parrish.”

“What if…” Laura shakes her head to clear it. “What if they tell someone about werewolves?”

The sheriff shrugs. “Then I guess they’ll be doing at least part of their time in a psychiatric ward, won’t they?”

And he flashes her a cheeky smile that reminds her of Stiles.

 

***

 

The SWAT team rounds up three hunters and Gerard Argent.

Kate isn’t here.

Laura feels an anxious spike of fear in her gut as she sits in the back of an ambulance, a shock blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and watches her captors being loaded into police vans.

Kate isn’t here.

But Gerard is going to jail, so even if the fight isn’t over yet, then at least they’re winning so far, right?

 

***

 

“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Parrish says, as he drives them away from the warehouse. Laura and Peter are in the back seat. The sheriff is in the passenger seat. “I’ll take a notebook statement from each of you that will do for now, but sometime in the next few days I’m gonna need to get the real thing. And I don’t want either of you going back to your places while Kate’s still on the loose.”

“You won’t catch her,” Peter says. “She’ll go to ground and only come up again when she’s ready.”

“Maybe so,” Parrish says. “And that’s something else we need to talk about. John and I are in this with you now, so we’re gonna need you to be totally open with us about everything you know about the Argents.”

Peter meets Laura’s gaze. She nods.

“That’s reasonable,” Peter concedes. “But it goes both ways, Deputy. How did you even find out about werewolves?”

The sheriff answers that one. “Stiles was worried about Laura, and got in contact with Derek. Derek did that thing with his eyes, and the cat was pretty much out of the bag at that point.”

“The wolf,” Parrish corrects.

“I’ve put up with a lot of bullshit today, Parrish,” the sheriff says. “I’m not about to start mixing metaphors.”

Parrish snorts.

Laura exhales slowly. Of course Derek lost control. He’s been struggling with it so much lately, but she’s not going to admonish him for it. Not when it saved their lives. Not when he came back for them. “Is Derek okay?”

“He’s with Stiles,” the sheriff says. He digs his phone out of his pocket. “And speaking of Stiles, that’s a whole other conversation we all need to have.”

Laura feels like a chastened child. She nods, and puts a hand over her abdomen.

The sheriff makes a call. “Stiles?” Laura can’t quite make out any words from the excited babble on the other end of the line. “We’re all fine,” the sheriff says. “We’re on our way home now. I just didn’t want you to worry.” His expression softens. “Take a breath, kid. Take a breath, and I’ll see you in a few minutes, okay?”

Laura leans back and closes her eyes. She reaches out for Peter’s hand and holds it.

_Take a breath._

That’s good advice.

She leans up against Peter for the rest of the ride.

 

***

 

“Laura!” Stiles bursts out of the house as soon as the cruiser pulls in. “Dad!”

Laura climbs out of the backseat and into Stiles’s exuberant embrace.

“I was so worried,” he tells her, drawing back to look at her face. “Are you okay? Really?”

“Really,” she promises him. She takes his hand and presses it to her abdomen—a gesture so strangely intimate, but somehow so appropriate—and his smile widens. Laura tells herself that this isn’t because Stiles is the baby’s father, this is because Stiles is her friend, and because Stiles has proven himself to be even more than that today. He’s an ally as well, and maybe even more. Maybe there’s a place in her pack for Stiles and his father, and it has nothing to do with blood ties. It’s because they’re good people.

She looks over Stiles’s shoulder to see Derek standing awkwardly on the front porch.

“Der!” she calls, and he approaches her almost unwillingly. Laura drags him into a hug. “Don’t you ever leave us again, Derek. _Promise_.”

He doesn’t answer her.

“Why are you wearing a vest, Dad?” Stiles demands. “Did you go _inside_?”

“Just a precaution,” the sheriff tells him, neatly sidestepping the question.

“Hi,” Stiles says to Peter. “You must be Peter Hale.”

“And you must be Stiles.” Peter surprises Laura by drawing Stiles into a friendly hug, and surreptitiously scenting him. When he releases him, he’s wearing a thoughtful expression.

“Okay,” the sheriff says. “Let’s all get inside, huh? Laura and Peter could do with some rest. God knows I could.”

Laura holds Derek’s hand as they head inside, half-convinced he’ll try to pull away from her.

They go into the living room. It’s comfortable, the furniture a little battered and aged, and lined with bookshelves and family photographs. Stiles, a gap-toothed little kid, grins out of a bunch of frames. Laura wants to grab one and inspect it, and imagine all the ways in which her baby might look like that.

She sits on one end of the couch, and the sheriff eases himself down on the other. Peter sits down in one of the armchairs, and Derek takes the other one. Stiles brings in a chair from the dining room for Parrish to sit, and then fetches a jug of iced water and a stack of glasses. He sits down on the couch between Laura and his father and listens, his forehead creased, while Parrish takes brief notebook statements.

“Wait,” he says. “Kate got _away_?”

Laura sees Derek flinch.

“For now,” Parrish says. “We’ll keep trying.”

“Son,” Sheriff Stilinski says, “today was a good result. Better than we could have hoped for, if I’m being totally honest. So now we take a breath, and we regroup, and we find a moment to be thankful we’re all okay before we start focussing on what didn’t go right, okay?”

Stiles chews his bottom lip. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Laura watches Peter watch Stiles. There’s something curious in his expression. Something almost avid. And then he looks to Derek, and his eyes widen slightly.

Laura sends Peter a questioning look, and he only shakes his head and smiles slightly.

Parrish finishes taking their statements, and Laura is startled when the sheriff announces they’re welcome to stay with the Stilinskis until they can be sure it’s safe to return to the loft. He says _welcome_ , but Laura doesn’t mistake is as anything other than a directive. She wonders if it should rankle—Laura is an _alpha_ —but finds that it doesn’t. She feels safe here.

When Parrish leaves to go back to the station, the sheriff suggests that Peter and Laura might want to shower and clean up.

Peter takes the first shower. When he’s done, he passes Laura in the upstairs hallway.

“You need to talk to your brother before he runs again,” he says softly.

Laura hugs her towel and stack of clean clothes to her chest. “Why would he run now?”

Peter smirks. “You remember how you told me that Stiles smelled like all those good things that reminded you of home and pack?”

She nods.

“Lulu.” Peter shakes his head, his eyes shining with ill-concealed mirth. “What a fucking mess you’ve gotten yourself into here. Stiles smells like that to you because he is your brother’s _mate_. Meanwhile, Derek obviously thinks you two are in a relationship.” 

Laura’s jaw drops.

“Idiot pups.” Peter snorts, and continues back downstairs.


	17. Chapter 17

The spare bedroom in the Stilinski house is empty except for a double bed and a dresser. It smells faintly stale to Derek’s nose—and to Stiles’s too, since the first thing he does is open the window and turn on the ceiling fan to get the air circulating again.

“So I don’t know if you and Laura want to share and give Peter the couch or whatever,” Stiles says, shaking a sheet out over the mattress. “We don’t really have the space for three people, but we can make it work, right?”

Derek isn’t sure why Laura wouldn’t be sharing with Stiles, and he opens his mouth to ask.

“Hey, Der?” Laura asks from the doorway.

He turns around.

She’s wearing clean sweatpants and a hoodie, and she’s in bare feet. Her hair is still wet from the shower. “Can we talk?”

He nods.

“Okay,” Stiles says brightly. I’ll, um, I’ll leave you guys to it. I’m probably going to make macaroni and cheese for dinner. You guys good with that? I hope so, because I can only make like three things, and that’s the easiest.”

“That sounds great, Stiles.” Laura smiles at him and squeezes his arm as he leaves the room. She closes the door after him, and Derek sits down on the half-made bed.

Laura sits next to him. She looks worried, like whatever she’s going to say is somehow going to hurt him. She’s figured it out, Derek realises. She knows Stiles is his mate, and she’s going to ask him to leave. Or, worse, she’s going to ask him to stay and pretend that nothing’s wrong. He clenches and unclenches his fists, his wolf whining in the back of his skull.

And then she opens her mouth, and the words that come out aren’t anything like he’s expecting:

“Stiles and I aren’t sleeping together,” she says. “He’s my friend, nothing else. I paid him for his sperm because he smelled good, and he reminded me of pack. And I think the reason that he reminded me of pack is that he’s supposed to _be_ pack. He’s supposed to be your mate.”

“You…” Derek’s heart races as he tries to take in what she just said. “You paid my mate for his sperm?”

“I didn’t know he was your mate!” Her eyes are wide and pleading. “I swear, Derek! I would never have done it if I’d known! And—and I _should_ have known, but I’m a terrible alpha! I didn’t know that you were hurting so much, and I didn’t know how weak your pack bond was, and I didn’t know how to help you, and I didn’t know that smell meant he was your _mate_! I’m so sorry!”

Derek’s breath rushes out of him as Laura dives into him. He puts his arms around her and holds her close, feeling her body shake with tears as he stares at the wall. He doesn’t know what to say. He never knows what to say.

“I—” He swallows. “I’m sorry too, Laura. I’m sorry for not trying harder to talk to you.”

“Derek.” Laura lifts her head, and holds his hands tightly in hers. “Please listen to me. Please understand that I mean what I’m saying. This isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.”

He hears her. He understands her. He doesn’t feel it yet, but maybe one day he will? He swallows and nods. “Okay, but it’s not your fault either, okay?”

Her eyes swim with tears.

“It’s not,” he repeats. “You’re doing your best. You have done, ever since the fire. You took it all on, Laura, all of the alpha’s responsibility, and you didn’t have anyone to show you what to do.”

“I messed it all up,” Laura whispers.

“No,” he says. “You didn’t.”

She’s silent for a long while, her fingers squeezing his. “Can we fix this, Der?”

He doesn’t know, but maybe? What’s one more impossible thing after everything today has already thrown at him? Peter and Laura are safe, and a whole bunch of people know about werewolves now, and Stiles is his mate and he’s not sleeping with Laura.

What’s one more impossible thing?

“Maybe,” he tells her softly. “I think we can.”

 

***

 

Derek texts Boyd to let him know that Laura and Peter are safe. Twenty minutes later, Boyd and Erica are pulling into the driveway in Boyd’s rattling old truck, and Stiles is digging out two extra plates for dinner.

It’s a full house, and usually the presence of so many people would put Derek on edge, but not today. Today it feels okay.

He likes Boyd and Erica, and he’s proud of the way that Laura welcomes them. He’s proud of the way she looks at him with a pleased smile when he introduces them to her.

They talk about easy things: about growing up in Beacon Hills, about the ice cream place that used to be on Fifth Street that closed down years ago now, about teachers they had in common at school and either loved or hated. About that old house on Fisher Lane that all the middle school kids swore was haunted, and about a hundred other memories of Beacon Hills that they all share even if they didn’t know one another back when they were kids. There’s an overlap of memories in small towns, of shared experiences, and Derek feels more at home here today than he has since coming back.

He eats his mac and cheese and lets the conversation float easily around him.

By the time Boyd and Erica leave again, he feels happier than he has in months.

 

***

 

Stiles is yawning by nine o’clock, and apologising for it.

“No, it’s been a long day,” Sheriff Stilinski says. He tries to lever himself up off the couch, winces, and drops back down again.

“Let me,” Peter says, and helps him to his feet.

Derek sees the black lines crawling up Peter’s forearm as he draws the sheriff’s pain. The sheriff doesn’t appear to notice, but he’s moving a lot more easily as he makes his way toward the steps.

Stiles follows him up the stairs like a shadow, ready to catch him if he stumbles. Derek watches them, warmth expanding in his chest.

“Derek?” Peter gestures him over to the couch and they sit. “You talked with Laura? About the baby?”

Derek nods.

“Good,” Peter says. “And what do you think?” 

Laura is in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher.

Derek lowers his voice. “She said he smelled like pack, almost, and that’s why she did it.”

Peter smiles slightly at that. “Yes, your sister has a long way to go before she really gets a handle on those alpha instincts, I think. You’ve been on the run so long that it’s only been about survival. Laura’s been an alpha since the fire, but this is the first time she’s actually had to think about growing a pack, and about creating new pack bonds. We’ll chalk the baby up to her very steep learning curve, hmm?”

That wrings an unwilling smile out of Derek. “Sure.”

“Well, I’m certain it’ll make a very hilarious story to tell for the baby’s twenty-first,” Peter smirks. “So there’s that to look forward to at least.”

Derek huffs out a breath.

He’s strangely unsettled by the revelation that Laura and Stiles aren’t together. He thinks that maybe he’s become so used to expecting the worst that he doesn’t know how to react when there’s actually an opening in his life for something good for once. Not that knowing Stiles is single means that he’ll want anything to do with Derek, but the lack of any immediate impediment leaves Derek feeling curiously unanchored and anxious. Maybe because now the pressure is on him? Because if he messes this up somehow—and he knows he will—then it won’t be circumstances conspiring against him. It’ll just be _him_. Just Derek.

Peter looks up as Laura enters the living room, and motions at her to come and sit down on his other side.

“If you want my advice, Derek,” he says softly, “then you’ll wait a little while. See how it plays out. Stiles only learned about werewolves today, pup. He might not be ready to hear about mates.”

Derek nods, grateful for the advice not to act, because he’s sure that he’ll screw it up if he tries to do anything.

“For what it’s worth though,” Peter continues, “I think that the Stilinskis are good people, and that they would be very much worth having as friends, whatever else happens. So, with the baby, perhaps it’s no longer a business arrangement. Lulu, if I were you I’d start thinking about whether or not you want to rip that contract up, and start again with both Stiles and John as a real and meaningful part of the baby’s life, in whatever capacity that suits them.”

Laura twists her fingers around the hem of her hoodie. “I didn’t plan for that.”

“There’s a lot in life we don’t plan for,” Peter tells her, his eyes shining for a moment with old pain. “But we adapt, and we move on. And make no mistake, that’s not just my advice as your uncle. It’s also my advice as your left hand. Having the sheriff of Beacon Hills as a friend and an ally would certainly make me sleep a little easier at night.”

A strategic benefit, of course, but there’s more to it than that, Derek thinks. Here they are, sitting around in an unfamiliar house that somehow smells almost like home. The Stilinskis _fit_ , and that has nothing to do with the sheriff’s job.

Laura’s brow creases. “The only reason I decided to have a baby was to expand the pack without bringing in any adults though, remember?”

“I remember,” Peter says. “And we _adapt_. We adapt and we become stronger for it.”

Derek glances at Laura to see if she has anything else to say, but his sister and alpha is silent.

Derek thinks that means that Peter has won.

Maybe it even means they’ve all won?

He likes to think so.

 

***

 

Peter elects to take the couch to sleep on, leaving Laura and Derek sharing the bed in the guest room. Stiles has dug out some new toothbrushes from somewhere, and Derek lets Laura use the bathroom first before bed. She comes back yawning and smelling of mint toothpaste.

Derek pads down to the bathroom next.

There is light spilling from Stiles’s bedroom and, on his way back from the bathroom, Derek glances inside.

Stiles is sitting in his chair at his desk, slumped forward with his head resting on his folded arms. His laptop is still open, bathing his face in the glow of the screen. He’s not-quite-snoring in his sleep, but he’s making snuffling noises when he breathes.

Derek enters his room, and pulls his comforter down. Then he crouches down beside Stiles and puts a tentative hand on his shoulder. “Stiles? Stiles, you should go to bed.”

He hates to think how uncomfortable it must be to sleep like that, and how many aches and pains Stiles will wake up with in the morning.

Stiles blinks his amber eyes open. “Wha—”

“You should go to bed,” Derek repeats softly.

Stiles blinks up at him, and then seems to take note of his surroundings. “Oh. Oh, yeah.”

He’s still half asleep as Derek helps him to his feet and over to his bed. He tumbles onto the mattress with a deep sigh, face-planting into the pillow.

His spine, under his thin t-shirt, is a long line, and his flannel pants hang loosely from his narrow hips. Derek can see an inch or two of exposed skin at the small of his back, right where the curve of his ass begins. His body is gorgeous, but it’s his face—screwed up into the pillow—that Derek thinks he likes the best. The wide, expressive mouth. The snub nose and the sharp cheekbones that should sit oddly together, but are somehow perfect. His long, dark lashes. His mole-spotted cheeks. He’s beautiful, and Derek’s heart aches just looking at him.

Stiles stretches as Derek watches, flopping over onto his back. He opens his eyes and blinks up at Derek. “Goodnight, Derek.”

Such simple, comfortable words, and they flood Derek with warmth. He’s almost overwhelmed by how much he wants this. How much he wants Stiles, and how easy it would feel to just climb into bed with him, and luxuriate in his sleepy warmth.

“Goodnight, Stiles,” Derek says, and pulls the comforter up over him.

He’s snuffling softly again as Derek closes his door gently and leaves him to sleep.


	18. Chapter 18

Stiles wakes up to the smell of freshly brewing coffee, and stares at the ceiling for a while. Yesterday was a dream, right? A crazy Adderall-fueled dream where werewolves were real, and Laura and Peter Hale got shot, and then they got magically _better_ , and Derek Hale had actual fangs and claws. Because there’s no way that shit was real.

Except, no, Stiles is pretty sure that everything actually happened.

He grabs his phone to check the time. It’s just past seven. Stiles never used to be much of an early riser, but Dad is, so he’s learned to get up so he can help him get dressed, and navigate the stairs, and make his breakfast.

Except this morning he can already smell coffee.

He climbs out of bed and lets the rich aroma drawn him down the stairs. He finds Peter Hale in the kitchen, whisking eggs.

“Morning,” Peter says. “Coffee?”

Stiles nods dumbly while Peter makes him a mug.

“Your father’s in his office,” Peter says. “He said he wanted to talk to you when you were up.”

Stiles isn’t quite awake enough to wince at that, but something of his apprehension shows in his face.

“I’m sure it will be just like ripping off a Band-Aid,” Peter says with a slight smile.

“Sure,” Stiles says, and rolls his eyes. “It’ll be a walk in the park.”

Peter’s smile grows, and he claps Stiles on the shoulder.

Stiles grips his mug of coffee tightly, and heads to his father’s study. It’s a small room at the end of the hall. It contains Dad’s desk, his gun safe, and locked filing cabinet that Stiles knows exactly how to pry open with a piece of wire, and a couple of bookshelves filled with Dad’s army and police memorabilia. There’s a framed photograph on the wall of the day that Dad was sworn in as sheriff. Stiles is beside him, a gangly, awkward thirteen-year-old with an unattractive buzzcut. They’re both smiling, but the day was bittersweet.

They were both missing Mom that day.

There’s not a major event in their lives, or a birthday or an anniversary, that they don’t still feel the loss of Claudia Stilinski. It’s made them cling even harder to one another, Stiles thinks. And it reminds him now, acutely, or how much family means, and how callously he broke it to Dad that there might one day be a little kid running around town with Claudia Stilinski’s smile, and her dimples.

“Hey,” he croaks. He feels like a kid who’s been summoned to the principal’s office.

Dad looks up from his desk. “Come in, kiddo. Close the door.”

Stiles snicks the door shut behind him, and shuffles over to Dad’s desk. There’s a footstool underneath that’s better than nothing. He pulls it out and sits down, and feels about six years old, staring up at Dad.

Dad gives him a look. “Come here, kid.”

Stiles stands up again, and rounds the desk. He plants his ass on the edge of it, and Dad reaches out and grips his hand. This is better. He doesn’t feel like he’s in for a dressing down like this. It also makes it harder to avoid looking at Dad though.

“Okay,” Dad says, and sighs. “Son, I’ve done a lot of thinking overnight, and you know what? This is still a fucking mess.”

Stiles nods, his face burning.

“I know why you did it,” Dad says. “I understand. But, Stiles, you’re not the sort of person who can just walk away from something like this. You’re going to have feelings about this. Big ones. And I’m not saying that you’re an emo, or whatever term the kids are using these days—”

“Um, not that one,” Stiles tells him.

Dad pushes on. “I’m saying that you have a _heart_. I’m saying that this is going to come back and bite you, because you’ll have a kid out there. A kid you gave up the right to even know, let alone parent.”

Stiles’s eyes sting, and his throat aches. He looks away, and catches a glimpse of his mom smiling out of him from a frame on Dad’s bookshelf. She has Stiles’s smile, or he has hers.

“I know why you did it,” Dad repeats. “But Jesus, son, I really wish you hadn’t.”

He tears his gaze away from his mother’s photograph. “Dad, we needed the money.”

“Stiles, I would rather sell this goddamn house than have you do something that’s going to _hurt_  you.” Dad shakes his head. “Do you really think you can watch Laura with this baby, and just pretend it’s your friend’s kid? That it doesn’t look like you, or like your _mom_?”

Stiles feels his face twist a second before the tears hit him. “We needed the money!”

“Come on,” Dad says, hauling himself awkwardly to his feet. He wraps his arms around Stiles. “Come on. You’re okay. It’s gonna hurt, kid, but you have to step up and deal with it, because it’s not going anywhere.”

Stiles leans back and scrubs his hands over his face. “I’d do it again, Dad. I would.”

Dad presses his mouth into a thin line for a moment, and then shakes his head again. “Okay. Let’s see if you still feel like that when the baby’s here.”

Stiles feels as though someone’s thrown cold water over him. This is… he and his Dad have had a rocky relationship at times, but they’ve always ended up hugging it out. This is different. This is bigger than anything that’s come before, and maybe it will take time, or maybe it’ll always be a bone of contention between them. But he means it. He’d do it again. Even knowing he’ll regret it, he’d do it again.

“I wouldn’t want to do it again,” he says. “But it’d do it anyway. You think I don’t know it’s going to hurt me? It _already_   hurts, okay? And I’d _still_   do it again.”

Dad eases himself down into his seat again, shaking his head. “You said you did this for me, Stiles? Then maybe you should have thought about how I’d feel too. That baby is my _grandchild_ , and you’ve already signed it away. You’d do it again? You have no right to make that choice for me!”

Stiles pushes away from his dad’s desk, blinded with tears. He can’t tell if he’s more upset or angry. He only knows that he can’t be here right now. He can’t deal with his dad’s condemnation. His contempt.

He can’t deal with any of this shit right now.

He pushes off the desk and storms out of the study, slamming the door behind him.

Then he runs upstairs to grab the keys to the Jeep.

 

***

 

Stiles’s escape attempt is curtailed by Parrish, who pulls into the driveway behind his Jeep just as Stiles turns the engine over. He forces a smile when Parrish waves at him.

“You heading out somewhere?” Parrish asks curiously.

Stiles deflates. “No. No, I’m not.”

Because where has he got to go? He hasn’t got a class until midmorning and his usual go-to place—the diner—was only his go-to place because Laura was there. And Laura is inside Stiles’s house right now. Also, he really doesn’t want to talk to Laura at the moment anyway. He wants to sit and process his feelings before he drags her into them.

He climbs out of the Jeep and follows Parrish into the house.

He goes upstairs when Parrish goes to talk to Dad, and climbs back into bed. He pulls his comforter up over his head.

He hates fighting with his Dad. He hates that he isn’t wrong. He hates that Dad isn’t either. How can they both be right, and there still be no fucking middle ground? It’s not fair.

Stiles went into this knowing that it would be hard. He went into this knowing that he would never be able to consider himself the father of Laura’s baby. And it’s not true to say that he didn’t think of his dad—his dad was _all_ he was thinking of—but somehow he never thought that his dad would want to be the baby’s grandfather. He never thought that Dad would think he was taking that away from him.

Stiles hears his bedroom door open with a slight creak, and feels a rush of hope that it’s Dad, and that he’s come to say sorry, or to say _something_   that will make this right. But there’s nothing, is there? And there’s no way Dad could get up the stairs that quickly anyway.

His mattress dips.

“Hey,” Derek says softly.

Stiles thinks about burrowing deeper under his comforter, but he tugs it down instead. He’s lying on his side, facing away from Derek. “Hey.”

“Yesterday, you said that whatever happened, we’d look out for each other.” The words are a little choppy, like Derek is unaccustomed to speaking in actual sentences. “Is it okay if I sit here with you?”

Stiles nods, his eyes stinging.

When he thinks of what the Hales have lost, he feels stupid and childish for tearing up over a fight with his dad. His dad is still alive, after all. But then hurt isn’t quantified like that, is it? There’s no sliding scale in place. No one-size-fits-all for heartbreak.

“He hates me,” he whispers at last.

“He doesn’t.” Derek’s voice is so warm.

“Like, the only reason I did this was for him,” Stiles manages. “And because Laura said she didn’t want me to step up and be a parent. I mean, I’m _eighteen_ , you know? And my dad’s acting like I stole something from him, and maybe I did, but this was _my_ choice, and I’m not ready to be a father.”

Derek squeezes his shoulder.

“I mean, why is he so obsessed with the baby thing anyway? Why isn’t he still freaking out over the werewolf thing like a normal person would be?”

Derek’s huff of breath almost passes as laughter. “Maybe Stilinskis just defy expectations all over the place.”

“Maybe,” Stiles agrees softly. “God. It’s such a mess though.”

“Mmm.” Derek’s thumb strokes the skin beside the loose neckband of his shirt, and Stiles relaxes into the touch and tries not to read too much into it at the same time. “Maybe your dad just needs some time to work through how he feels though.”

Stiles sighs. “No, I think he was pretty clear about how he feels.”

“Sometimes our first reaction is the wrong one,” Derek tells him, and it sounds like he’s talking from experience. “Sometimes it takes us a while to realise that.”

“But in the meantime you’ll look out for me, right?” Stiles tries to say it with a smile, but he doesn’t quite manage it. The words come out sounding more naked and vulnerable than he intended.

“Yes,” Derek says without hesitation. “I’ll look out for you.”

 

***

The world doesn’t stop spinning because of werewolves and babies and fights with his dad. Stiles finally drags himself out of bed to attempt this shitty day again, both embarrassed and comforted that Derek is still sitting on his bed.

“Thanks,” he says, his face heating up. “I’ve, um, gotta get ready for school now.”

Derek nods, and leaves him.

Stiles showers and dresses, and goes downstairs to forage for some cereal before going to college. The last thing he needs is to risk his grades by not attending.

He avoids the rest of the Hales, and his dad.

He eats his cereal standing over the kitchen sink, so he can make a quick escape.

When he leaves the house, Parrish’s cruiser is still parked in the driveway, and it’s a bitch to reverse the Jeep around it, but still a million times better than having to trek to the bus stop.

He turns the stereo up while he drives, and blasts his music loudly enough that he can almost convince himself he’s having fun. He’s a young carefree college kid, right? Just one among hundreds on campus. College is a sea of both normalcy and anonymity, and Stiles is looking forward to drowning in it today. He doesn’t even care that he’s got two hours of federal tax legislation to suffer through.

He checks his phone before going into the class, half-hoping for a text from Dad.

There’s nothing.

Stiles tells himself that he’s not upset, slips his phone back into his pocket, and goes inside.

He’s not upset.

It’s okay.

 


	19. Chapter 19

The sheriff doesn’t raise his voice when he’s angry with Stiles, but Laura, sitting in the living room, can hear every word, and every one of them feels like a punch in the gut.

“You said you did this for me, Stiles? Then maybe you should have thought about how I’d feel too. That baby is my  _grandchild_ , and you’ve already signed it away. You’d do it again? You have no right to make that choice for me!”

Nobody has told the Stilinskis about enhanced werewolf hearing yet.

Moments later the door to the study slams, and Stiles races up the stairs.

Derek gets up from his seat beside Laura on the couch, and disappears further into the house.  

Peter sits on the arm of the couch, and sips his coffee.

“You told him it would be like ripping off a Band-Aid,” Laura murmurs.

 “Well.” Peter shrugs and taps his fingers up the side of his mug “What the hell do I know about Band-Aids?”

There’s a challenge in his gaze that belies his flippancy, and Laura closes her eyes to avoid it for a moment, and just listens.

She hears Stiles tramp down the stairs again, and go outside and start his Jeep. Then she hears the sound of another car engine, and moments later Stiles is back, and Deputy Parrish is with him.

The squeak of footsteps on the stairs: Stiles first, and then Derek padding after him.

The low sound of voices from the study: the sheriff and Parrish.

And heartbeats. She can hear all their heartbeats, beating in sync here, and in counterpoint there, each individual beat coalescing into the steady hum of background noise. Her own heartbeat is part of that strange symphony too, and Peter’s. And there’s a new one too: the tiny little squeeze and press of a developing muscle in a body the size of a sweet pea.

She opens her eyes again to find Peter still gazing at her.

“Don’t give me that face, Lulu,” he says. “I’m not the one who can smooth this over.”

Laura closes her eyes again and exhales.

It was never supposed to be this complicated. Stiles was her friend, and she liked talking with him and laughing with him, and her wolf liked the way he smelled. It was a simple equation. Everything is simple for the wolf. Of course, the wolf’s instincts don’t always align with the complex reality of the human world.

This was never supposed to be this complicated, but it _is_ , and Peter’s right. Laura can’t rely on someone else to fix this for her. She’s Laura Hale. She’s the alpha, and she’s going to be a mother, and she needs to step up and make this right.

She opens her eyes as she hears Parrish leaving.

Parrish leans in the doorway on his way out. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Laura manages a smile.

“John wants to see you guys,” Parrish says.

“Thanks.”  Laura stands up and walks down the hallway towards the sheriff’s study. Peter follows.

She knocks on the doorframe with her knuckles. “Sheriff?”

He looks up from the paperwork on his desk. “Laura. Peter. Come in. Sorry, I don’t have any spare chairs in here…”

Peter vanishes, and reappears a moment later with two from the dining room.

“So, Parrish brought me copies of the statements from Gerard Argent and his men,” the sheriff says. “They’re being pretty tight-lipped at the moment, but on the plus side, they also haven’t said a word about werewolves.”

“They’re very big on secrecy,” Peter says, and reaches for the statements. “May I?”

The sheriff stares at him for a moment, and then shoves the statements toward him. “Why the hell not? It’s already a goddamn cover up. Tainting your witness testimony is hardly going to make a difference at this point, is it?”

Peter smirks, but keeps his mouth shut as he takes the statements.

Thank fuck.

It’s obvious John Stilinski is a decent guy and an ethical cop, and that everything about this rubs him the wrong way. When it comes to his job, Laura isn’t sure that anybody should try to push him any further than he already feels he’s been pushed.

“Well, if they won’t come up with a motive,” Peter suggests, “then maybe your officers should supply them with one.”

The sheriff raises his eyebrows.

“If I were Deputy Parrish, for example,” Peter says, “I might ask if this was some sort of ransom attempt. We surviving Hales are quite wealthy, thanks to life insurance payouts from the fire. If Deputy Parrish asked if that’s what this was all about, I can imagine that the hunters will be agreeable to that.”

“Why would they be agreeable?”

“Because it keeps werewolves out of the picture,” Peter says. “Which keeps them from being medicated to the gills on antipsychotic meds in prison. And also because if the police think it’s all about the money, then they’re unlikely to dig too deeply for a connection to the fire. I’d rather do a few years for kidnapping than a much longer stretch for eight counts of murder, wouldn’t you?”

Laura doesn’t know how Peter can talk about the fire with such pragmatic detachment, as though it’s something that happened to someone else’s family. As though it’s purely academic.

“Do we still have the death penalty in California?” he asks. “Or was that taken off the books while I was in my coma?”

“We’ve still got it,” Sheriff Stilinski says. “But California hasn’t executed a death row inmate since 2006.”

“Still, not a pleasant prospect, I would imagine.” Peter flips through a few more pages. “If Deputy Parrish gives them the chance to pretend this was a kidnapping, and not them coming back to finish the job they started with the fire, they’ll take it. They’re not fools.”

“And what about the fire?” the sheriff asks. “Aren’t you interested in justice for that?”

“Oh, I’m very interested,” Peter tells him mildly. “But it’s not something I intend to bother the police with.”

“Peter,” Laura says in a warning tone, seeing the flash of anger in the sheriff’s eyes.  

Peter smirks.

The sheriff regards them both silently for a moment. “I’ll suggest it to Parrish,” he says at last. “We’ll see if they bite. Meanwhile, there’s still no sign of Kate Argent. She might have left town already.”

Peter’s expression hardens. “She won’t have. Kate Argent has the habit of coming at you in unexpected ways, and she won’t be very happy that Gerard is in custody. She’s still here, I’d bet my life on it.”

“Huh.” Sheriff Stilinski leans back in his chair. “You betting your life on what Kate Argent would do didn’t go so well last time, did it?”

“Not so well, no,” Peter agrees, his top lip curling slightly at the challenge in the sheriff’s tone. “She was supposed to come after me first, not Laura and Derek. She wasn’t even supposed to know about the loft.”

“You’re the tactician, right?” The sheriff leans forward again. “That’s your job in the pack? Your plan almost got you and Laura killed, didn’t it? What went wrong?”

Peter growls, the sound low and ominous.

The sheriff doesn’t even blink.

“What went _wrong_ ,” Peter says, “is that the bitch came at me at the loft, and not in my apartment. What went wrong is that there should have been three of us, instead of just the two of us. What went wrong is that I probably led her to the loft myself, instead of avoiding it, because Derek ran and Laura called me, and I didn’t _think_. I just went straight there, like a fucking idiot. Is that what you wanted to hear, Sheriff?”

The sheriff presses his mouth into a thin line. “You talk a big game, Peter, but you’re not infallible. Your mistakes could have got you and Laura and the baby killed.”

“I know what my mistakes have cost,” Peter says, his eyes flashing. “You’ve seen the autopsy reports from the fire.”

“Yeah, I have,” the sheriff says. “And it’s only pure dumb luck I’m not looking at yours right now. If you want my help on this, and make no mistake, you _need_ my help on this, then it comes with conditions. It stops. Right now, it stops. These guys go to prison, and it’s done. You understand me? It’s _done_. No more revenge. No more killings. It’s done.” He gives Peter a moment to growl, and then raises his eyebrows. “So you tell me, Peter, what do you need to happen for you to agree to that?”

Peter exchanges a look with Laura.

“I need Gerard and Kate either in a jail cell or in a grave,” he says at last.

“Okay,” Sheriff Stilinski says. “Then you give me a chance to make that happen.”

Peter blinks, and Laura can feel the faint surprise sharpening his scent. It’s not often that Peter finds himself manipulated into being accommodating, and the speed with which the sheriff got him from smirking at the idea of taking his own bloody revenge against the Argents to agreeing to allow the police to handle it was truly something.

And he only had to drag him a little way through hell to make it happen.

Laura thinks that Peter has possibly underestimated the sheriff, and that he’s as much intrigued by the idea as he is piqued by it.

“Fine,” Peter says at last, sounding almost rattled. “I’ll give you your chance.”

It’s the sheriff’s turn to smirk.

 

***

 

Peter leaves to stew, or brood, or plot his revenge against the sheriff—or, Laura suspects, more weirdly, to ponder the dimensions of his newfound admiration for the man—and the sheriff looks at Laura like he expects her to follow him.

“Werewolf hearing,” she says instead. “It’s a thing.”

The sheriff’s brows draw together. “What sort of a thing?”

“A very acute thing,” Laura says. “I heard every word between you and Stiles earlier.”

The sheriff sags in his chair, and exhales heavily. It’s a mix of disappointment and regret. “Every word?”

She nods. “Sheriff, Stiles doesn’t want to be a father. That’s part of the reason I chose him. Because our pack is the three of us.” _Was_ , she thinks. _Was the three of us_. “And I wanted a baby without the baggage of its father in the picture, because the last thing I thought we needed was another fully grown person in the mix, when our pack bonds were already fragile.”

She can tell by the look on his face that the sheriff doesn’t entirely understand that. It doesn’t matter. It’s not the point.

 “Stiles doesn’t want to be my baby’s father,” she says. “But you saved our lives, John. And I would be honoured to have you as a part of my child’s life, in any capacity that you want. Family friend. Random uncle. Even grandpa, if that’s what you want.” Her chest aches. “I had a Grandma Alice when I was growing up. Turns out she wasn’t related to either of my parents. She was my dad’s old elementary school teacher. So what I’m saying is you can be Grandpa John if you want. Stiles doesn’t need to be my child’s father to make it work.”

The sheriff passes a hand over his face. When he looks up again, his eyes are brimming with tears. “It’s more than I deserve, Laura.” His voice is rough.

“It’s not,” she tells him. “John, I know this past year has been really hard on you. It’s been really hard on Stiles too. When I was his age, I lost everything, and I suddenly had to step up and be responsible in ways I hadn’t before. And I messed up a lot too. Just ask Derek and Peter. I’m _still_ messing up. And the worst thing isn’t even all the screw-ups I’ve made. It’s the thought that Derek or Peter might not forgive me for them.”

“Laura, I only found out about this yesterday.” He holds up a hand. “I _know_. I know that’s no excuse. But it’s a lot. It’s just a lot.”

Laura nods. “I know it is.”

The sheriff exhales heavily. “I’m gonna need some time to come to terms with all of this. For what it’s worth though, thank you for the offer to be Grandpa John. I appreciate that, and I _will_ be taking you up on it. And hopefully by the time the baby actually arrives, me and Stiles will have it all sorted out between us.”

“I hope so too,” Laura tells him. “Because you’re our friends. Both of you.”

 _You’re our pack_ , she wants to say, but she knows that one’s going to have to wait.


	20. Chapter 20

Derek lingers for a moment outside Stiles’s room before going in and sitting at the desk. He feels calmer here, where Stiles’s scent is concentrated in the house, and Stiles has classes until late this afternoon, so it’s not creepy, is it? It’s not like Derek is going through his drawers or anything. He would never do anything to violate Stiles’s trust in that way. He’s just sitting, with his eyes closed, breathing in his mate’s scent.

He’s not going to pressure Stiles.

Derek can wait.

For the first time in a long time he’s starting to believe in the idea of a future, and it’s easy to make room in it for Stiles. Actually, the idea of a future is still so new and nebulous that Derek finds he doesn’t need to make room for Stiles at all. Instead, it’s the idea that shifts and moves, and creates itself in the exact same shape as Stiles Stilinski. If Stiles wants to stay in Beacon Hills, Derek can imagine himself staying. If he wants to travel, then Derek can imagine that too. If he wants some job where he comes home late and tired, then Derek imagines meeting him on the doorstep of their little house, and folding him in an embrace that will make all the stresses of the day fade into nothing.

His wolf is both hopeful and content, and Derek feels more at peace than he has in years, even though the last few days have been more tumultuous than anything since the fire. And he knows that Kate is still out there, and he knows that she is still a danger to them and yet, here in this room, Derek feels safe.

How astonishing that Stiles has given him that without even knowing.

Derek’s future might shift and change to shape itself to the dimensions of Stiles, but it isn’t rigid and inflexible. It’s bigger than it appears, somehow. Stiles might be at the heart of it, but the future is as vast as Derek wants it to be. Laura is there, smiling proudly, and holding a baby with dark-eyes and a cheeky grin who will call him Uncle Derek. And Peter is there as well, prowling on the edges when it suits him to appear aloof, but with a hand cupped around the back of Derek’s neck when he needs it, pressing their foreheads together, and calling him pup. John Stilinski is there too, because he is important to Stiles. And Derek imagines that they are all tethered by pack bonds, gold and glowing in his mind, and he follows them and finds newer faces, newer heartbeats, at the ends: his friends, Boyd and Erica.

He wonders if Laura has seen their potential, or Peter has, and if there is a place for them in the pack.

And then he realises that _he_ has seen their potential, and he can ask Laura to consider them.

Derek is a beta in the Hale pack, and he has the right to ask his alpha to consider his friends’ potential for the bite.

He doesn’t doubt that Erica would leap at the chance. The bite would cure her epilepsy. And Boyd, of course, would follow Erica to the ends of the earth. And they would both make good pack mates, Derek thinks. He likes them, and he trusts them, and they he feels like they could belong in the pack. He feels like they would make the pack stronger, and weave their bonds into the existing threads seamlessly.

He knows that both of them want to travel to see the world, but what if Laura offered them a whole new world right here in Beacon Hills? He wonders if they would accept it immediately, or if they would still want to buy their campervan and drive around the country first. It wouldn’t matter, probably. If Laura thinks they’re good candidate to join the pack, then the offer would never be given conditionally. They would still be able to do both.

The bite is a gift, Mom always said. A bond is not a chain.

Derek thinks of Stiles, and of his idea of trust fall exercises to strengthen the pack bonds, and smiles, because it really doesn’t work like that. Well, maybe it doesn’t. What the hell does Derek know? Anyway, the idea of it amuses him, which seems like another gift that Stiles has given him without knowing.

He feels like…

He feels like he’s being living underwater, and now he’s broken through the surface and drawn a breath for the first time in years, and everything is louder and brighter and more vibrant.

Derek inhales deeply, and fills his lungs again with the scent of Stiles.

 

***

 

In the afternoon, Derek finds Peter in the Stilinskis’ kitchen, staring into the refrigerator with the haughty gaze of a man who is staring into the void and is totally unbothered by the fact that it’s staring back at him.

“There is no cream in this house, Derek,” he says. “How am I supposed to make fettuccine carbonara if there is no cream in this house?”

“Why are you making fettucine carbonara?”

Peter ignores the question. “The worst thing about being in unofficial witness protection has to be the lack of cream.”

Derek raises his eyebrows. “That’s probably not the worst thing.”

“You say that now,” Peter says, “but wait until we’re having grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.” He straightens up again and lets the refrigerator door swing closed. “What can I do for you, pup?”

Derek takes a breath, and pushes back against the anxiousness that rises up in him.

“I want to know how to make my pack bonds feel right again,” he says softly. “Like they did when Mom was the alpha.”

Peter regards him quietly for a moment, and the nods to the door that leads outside into the backyard. “Come with me, Derek.”

 

***

 

The backyard is small, and the lawn is a little untended and overgrown. There are garden beds that run down each side fence, but if they ever had flowers growing in them at some point, they don’t now. The back fence is lined with bushes. In one corner there’s a large tree with spreading branches that Derek thinks will need to be cut back before the next storm season. One of the boughs is scarred, and Derek can see how a child’s swing once hung from it, the ropes digging in over the years.

The porch stairs squeak as Peter steps down them onto the grass.

Derek follows him, dubious.

“Sit,” Peter says, gesturing to the lawn, and sits down himself. He waits until Derek does the same. “Now, normally I’d advocate for doing something like this in the Preserve, but we’ll make do, hmm?”

“Doing something like what?” Derek asks, brows tugging together.

“Your wolf is always closest to your skin when you’re closest to nature,” Peter tells him. “And your wolf is where you find your pack bonds.”

Derek runs his hand over the grass, and wonders if Stiles’s trust falls idea was as stupid as it sounded. Because honestly, this sounds just as dumb.

“It’s alright, Derek,” Peter says, his mouth quirking into a quick grin. Like always, he knows exactly what Derek’s thinking. “I’m not going to ask you to buy healing crystals or patchouli. But think. The last time your pack bonds felt right was before the fire, and what did you do every day back then? You spent time in the Preserve. You _lived_  in the Preserve. It wasn’t just the loss of the rest of the pack that weakened your bonds, although of course that was most of it. It was also the fact that you took your wolf out of his territory. Out of his home. And, worse, you took him to somewhere he couldn’t feel the grass under his feet. He’s been starving, pup. Your wolf, and Laura’s, and mine while I was stuck in that hospital. So let’s just sit here for a while, and listen to the breeze, and feel the sunlight on our skin and the ground underneath our asses, hmm?”

Derek nods, and draws in a deep breath.

He becomes aware of the buzzing of insects, of the rustling of the leaves, and of the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. It’s peaceful and invigorating at the same time. He slides his palm over the grass, feeling the strands bend under his touch.

Mom always said that Beacon Hills was their territory. She said that the pack belonged here, and that they looked after the land and the land looked after them. Derek hadn’t wanted to come home, but he can’t deny that it feels right to be here. He was so scared to come back, knowing Kate would find them here, but even though that was true, he can’t deny that this is where he belongs.

Wolves are territorial. Their land is in their blood. They’re supposed to defend it, not run. And Derek has spent so long running that it became second nature. That was a mistake, he thinks now. Because their true nature should have been to stand their ground.

They were scared kids though, and they’d thought they were all alone in the world.

Scared kids who ran like pups.

Well, they’re not running now. They’re a pack, and they’re defending their territory.

Derek’s wolf presses close to his skin, its claws pricking his fingertips, and growls in agreement.

“You asked me how to strengthen pack bonds,” Peter says at last, tilting his head back so that the sunlight hits his face. “Three things. Trust, touch, and time. That’s how an alpha maintains a pack, and that’s how pack bonds are upheld. Blood relationships and the bite can make a bond, but they can’t sustain one. Not without trust, touch and time.”

Derek considers that for a moment, and then closes his eyes.

He tries to visualise the pack bond he shares with Laura. She is his alpha and his sister. It should be his cornerstone, he thinks. He imagines it as a twisting piece of gold ribbon connecting their wolves. He tries to follow it with his mind, and somehow gets muddled and focuses in on Peter’s heartbeat instead.

It’s fine.

Peter is pack too, and Peter is _easier_. Peter might be his uncle, but he’s also just a beta like Derek. Derek’s wolf doesn’t feel the same obligations to Peter that he does to Laura. Peter and Derek are the same rank, which makes it less complicated.

It’s fine to start with Peter.

Also, Peter is physically closest to him right now, and that must count for something. So Derek focuses on Peter instead, and Peter knocks their shoulders together, and then reaches out and curls his fingers around Derek’s wrist. His grip is gentle but firm, and Derek doesn’t feel the urge to pull away at all.

He keeps his eyes closed. “Stiles said we should do trust falls.”

“I have no idea what your wolf sees in that boy.” But Peter’s tone is too fond to be serious.

“He smells right.”

“He does,” Peter agrees, and Derek can hear the smile in his voice.

“Do you think he likes me?” Derek asks quietly.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Peter says. “It’s there, pup, don’t worry.”

Derek relaxes again.

Stiles is not a pack bond. Stiles is no curling golden ribbon in that place where Derek’s mind meets the wolf’s. Stiles is an explosion of light, a shower of it that brightens everything else. He is _warmth_ , and _home_  and _want_  and _need_ and _hope_  and, soon, _pack_. Stiles is the dawn, when everything has been night for so long.

And then, just as Derek is stepping into that light, he feels everything inside him sharpen with a sudden panic that doesn’t belong to him, and then that warm glow in Derek’s mind is swamped as cold, black fear comes flooding in.

His eyes flash open.

“Derek?” Peter asks. “What is it?”

“It’s Stiles!” Derek’s heart is racing and his wolf is clawing at him, desperate to rend and snap and howl its sudden anguish for all the world to hear. “Something’s happened to Stiles!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might be a little slower starting tomorrow, as I go onto night shifts at work.


	21. Chapter 21

The clock beside the bed says that it’s 4:58 in blinking red letters. Which means it’s been a little over half an hour since Stiles’s shitty day got exponentially shittier thanks to the introduction of a psycho with a gun. She hasn’t introduced herself yet, but Stiles doesn’t really need an introduction, does he? She can only be Kate Argent.

Stiles shifts his weight on the hotel bed mattress. He’s lying on his side, his hands duct-taped in front of him. His ankles are similarly bound, and there’s a strip of tape covering his mouth as well. He’s got an itch in the middle of his back that all the squirming in the world hasn’t made disappear, and it might be literally the least of his problems but it’s driving him _crazy_.

It’s much better to dwell on that than the fact that he’s lying bound and helpless in this hotel room, while a crazy woman with a gun watches him from her seat by the door.

She’s attractive. Like, more attractive that Stiles wants to admit. He’s a nice guy, right? Surely it’s not just the fact that she’s smoking hot that enabled her to Ted Bundy him in the parking lot of the college. Like, he would have offered to help her even if she wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, right? He thinks he would have.

So there’s that.

At least he’s going to die because he’s a decent person, not because he was thinking with his dick, right?

Stiles had been heading back to the Jeep when he’d seen the woman stepping out of her car, and papers going everywhere.

And yeah, Stiles is clumsy as fuck too, so he stopped to help. He can’t even remember what they talked about now. Probably some bullshit about how unlucky she was, and how that was okay, Stiles was glad to help, and then he’d reached for another paper and felt the press of something against his side.

A gun.

“Get in the car, sheriff’s kid,” the woman had said, her smile never wavering. “Make a sound, and I’ll shoot you right here.”

So Stiles had got in her car, where she’d taken her phone off him and written down Dad’s phone number. Then, as they’d peeled out of the parking lot, she’d dropped his phone out the window and Stiles had heard it smashing on the asphalt.

And now here they are at a hotel on the edge of town, after a brief stop at reception: “If you do anything to tip the staff off, I’ll kill you first, and then I’ll kill them. Understand?”

Stiles had understood. He’d waited until they got to the room to ask what she wanted from him, and that’s when the duct tape came out.

Stiles hates the duct tape.

He shifts, trying to find a more comfortable position, but there really isn’t one. He shifts again, and then freezes when Kate stands up from her chair and approaches the bed.

She regards him for a moment with a cocked brow, and then produces a phone and snaps a few pictures of him.

“I think your father will like these, won’t he?”

Sure, Stiles thinks. He’ll print them out and hang them in the living room right alongside all those other happy Stilinski family moments. Which have been few and far between lately, it feels like, but they were getting back on track, weren’t they? This morning notwithstanding.

Jesus.

Stiles can’t let this morning be the last moment he spends with his dad.

They can’t leave things like that.

His fear must show on his face.

“Aw, don’t worry, sweetie,” Kate says, her mouth pressed into a sympathetic moue that Stiles doesn’t buy for a second. “As soon as your father releases my father, you’re free to go.”

Stiles doesn’t believe that for a second either. He has a feeling that Kate is a leave-no-stone-unturned kid of psycho. It’s why she and her father were here in the first place, right? To kill the few Hales who escaped the fire.

He rolls his eyes at her, and she laughs.

It’s a dumbass plan anyway. It’s not like Dad can just release Gerard Argent, right? Maybe. Stiles doesn’t know. But firstly, Dad is still on sick leave and technically this whole thing is Parrish’s show, though of course Parrish doesn’t have anyone in his life for Kate to kidnap. He doesn’t even have a cat. Also, how would Dad and Parrish even swing that? Would they allow Gerard bail on the understanding he’d skip it? Or arrange for him to “break out” while he was being transported to court or something? Or could they really actually do it? Just let Gerard Argent walk out of his cell, and delete the files and shred all the paperwork? Stiles is pretty sure a scenario like this has never come up before, and he’s been hitting his dad with all sorts of crazy hypotheticals for years.

_“But what if a pair of identical twins confessed to the same crime?”_

_“Son, come on...”_

_“Oooh! Wait! What if they were conjoined twins, but only one of them was guilty?”_

_“Stiles, I’m trying to take a shower!”_

Stiles’s eyes sting, and he turns his face further into the pillow so that Kate doesn’t see his tears.

“Okay, sweetie,” Kate says, looming over him. “I’m going to take the tape off now, and you’re not going to yell, are you?”

Stiles shakes his head.

Her smile grows, and she digs her fingernails into his cheek and rips the tape off.

Stiles flinches.

She holds up a phone. “And now we’re going to call your father. You’re going to tell him to release my father, so that you’ll get to go home.” She raises her eyebrows. “And no cheating, sweetie. If you even attempt to tell the sheriff where we are, the last thing he’ll hear will be your brains splattering up against the wall. Got it?”

“Got it,” Stiles mutters.

Kate dials the number, and holds the phone up to Stiles’s ear. Dad answers almost immediately.

“Who is this?” Dad’s voice is rough, and a little thready with worry, like he already knows something’s wrong.

“It’s me,” Stiles says. “Dad, she has a gun, and she says that you need to release Gerard Argent from custody or she’ll kill me.”

“ _Stiles_.”

His throat aches. “Dad, I’m really sorry—”

“Enough of that, sweetie,” Kate says. She slaps the tape back down over his mouth and lifts the phone away again. “Sheriff Stilinski, let’s talk.”

 

***

 

Stiles only hears one side of the conversation. It’s enough. Kate doesn’t care how Dad gets Gerard out, just that he does it, and that she won’t release Stiles until it happens. And she’ll know when she talks to Gerard if it’s a lie or not—they have some sort of code word.

Dad has to know it’s bullshit. Not the code word stuff, but the fact she says she’ll let Stiles go.

Maybe…

No. He refuses to believe she’s telling the truth about that. Because if he believes her, then he co-operates, and if he co-operates, he just makes it easier for her to kill him.

Kate Argent set fire to a house with kids inside; she’s clearly not morally opposed to murder. And Stiles has absolutely no reason to believe that she’ll make an exception in his case.

He intends to go down fighting.

 

***

 

The minutes flash by in red blinking figures on the clock, and Stiles tries not to think about getting hungry, or needing to pee.

“I’m not the bad guy here, you know, sweetie,” Kate says at last. She’s sitting cross-legged in the chair, the toe of one boot pointing toward him. “ _I’m_ not the monster.”

Stiles shrugs his shoulders and stares back at her. He turns his mouth down, and feels the tape shifting. It hasn’t stuck well after Kate slapped it back down, and it’s annoying him.

“If your father knew what he’d got himself mixed up in,” Kate says, and then gives a short, sharp laugh. “If he knew what he was actually protecting… He’s a good man, the sheriff?”

Stiles nods.

“Well, there are a lot of things out there that we take care of so that men like your father can sleep easily in their beds at night!”

It’s easy enough to pretend not to know what she’s talking about and to look confused as hell, because that’s some bullshit right there. Kate is absolutely the bad guy here, and werewolves have nothing to do with it.

But it’s interesting. Kate has clearly targeted him because he’s the sheriff’s kid, not because he’s friends with Laura, or that Laura’s pregnant with a baby he helped her make. Not because he is involved in this werewolf business in any way. Not because the Hales are staying at his house right now. There’s a damn good chance that Kate doesn’t know any of that. Stiles isn’t sure if it’s an advantage in any way, but it’s _something_ , right? It’s something even if it’s only the ability to see what absolutely shit she’s talking when it comes to monsters. She’s implying that there is something much worse out there, but there isn’t. There’s Laura, who makes a mean milkshake, and Peter, who hugged Stiles the first time he met him, and Derek, who…

Derek.

Stiles barely knows the guy, but he _wants_ to. He thinks they have a connection, and he’s pretty sure Derek feels it too. It’s more than attraction, although that’s there too. Derek feels _right_ , and Stiles can’t think of a better way to articulate the feeling than that: Derek feels right.

Derek’s another reason that Stiles won’t go down without a fight.

Kate smirks at him. “Take a nap, sweetie. You might be here a while.”

Stiles wriggles, trying to get the circulation back into his numb fingers, and rests his head on the pillow. He rubs his head back and forth a few times, pleased when the friction lifts the tape part way off his mouth and he can at least wet his dry lips. It’s a small mercy, and Stiles knows that it’s probably the only one Kate’s going to allow him.

He’ll take it.

 

***

 

He dozes, which is weird, but probably just the adrenaline dump. He dreams as well, and that’s weirder.

He dreams he’s sitting in his back yard, and the sun is shining, and Derek is beside him.

It’s a very vivid dream. Stiles can smell the air, and see the veins in the leaves, and feel the tickle of an ant as it crawls across the back of his hand.

Stiles shakes the ant off and then reaches out and plucks a dandelion stem from the lawn. He twists it through his fingers.

Derek watches him, smiling slightly.

“You should smile more,” Stiles says. “Not because I’m being a creep like when guys say that to girls in the street. I mean, you do look really pretty when you smile, which is hot, but I like your smiles mostly because they mean that you’re happy.”

Even in his dreams Stiles rambles like a champion.

Derek’s smile grows, like he’s thinking the exact same thing.

“This is nice here,” Stiles says.

Derek is here with him and, even though Stiles can’t hear them, he knows that Dad is inside the house watching TV, and that Laura is napping upstairs with an open magazine beside her, and that Peter is busy whipping up something in the kitchen. In this dream, they don’t feel like disparate people sharing space under one roof. They feel like a family. Stiles is almost afraid to press on that feeling too hard, in case it shatters.

It’s a nice dream.

Everything is calm and peaceful and diffused with golden light.

“Where are you, Stiles?” Derek asks him, his smile fading. He looks around as though he’s confused to be here. 

Stiles snorts and flicks him with the dandelion stem. “I’m here, Derek, with you.”

“No.” Derek looks at him intently. “Where are you, Stiles?”

Stiles snorts again, and gestures to the yard. “I’m right here.”

“Stiles.” Derek’s eyes seem to flicker, and Stiles feels his stomach swoop. “Where _are_ you?”

And then the entire yard flickers.

“I’m…” Stiles blinks, and sees the ugly hotel comforter in his field of vision. Blinks again, and Derek is back. “I’m the Value Inn. Room 17.”

And the dream vanishes around him, as Kate grips him hard by the hair, pulling him up, dragging him, and slamming his head into the headboard of the bed.

 

***

 

Stiles has fallen into the narrow place between the bed and the wall. He can taste blood, and blinks some of it out of his right eye. The duct tape is hanging from one stinging cheek. 

“What was that?” Kate asks him. She’s crouched over him, a knee digging into his solar plexus, and her hand still fisted in his hair. “What the _fuck_ was that?”

“It was nothing!” Stiles winces as she grinds his head against the floor. “It was _nothing_! I talk in my sleep!”

And it _was_ nothing, wasn’t it?

Kate’s eyes are gleaming now, maniacal. “Oh, so you talk in you sleep, do you? And do you often talk to _Derek_?”

“Who?” Stiles attempts.

Kate lets go of his hair and grabs his throat instead, her fingers digging in beside his trachea. “Oh, sweetie. Do you know Derek? Then you and me have something on common.” She leans in close, her mouth curling into a smile. “Let’s give Derek a little present, hmm? Make you all pretty for when he finds your corpse.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Stiles rasps out, and she tightens her grip.

“No more lies, sheriff’s kid,” Kate tells him. She reaches back and pulls something out of her back pocket. Flicks a button and a blade springs out. “We are _way_ past that now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: I have not even started the next chapter yet, so I hope to have a cruise night shift and get it done at work. If not, this is where the delay will happen!


	22. Chapter 22

Laura takes the stairs two at a time when she hears the back door slam in its frame and Peter shouting out to the sheriff.

“Call Stiles! Call Stiles _now_!”

The hair on the back of Laura’s neck stands up. She can feel Peter’s worry and, coming fast on the crest of that, Derek’s sharply rising panic. For the first time in a long time Laura is almost glad their bond is weaker than it was before the fire—the intensity of Derek’s sudden dread almost ƒoverwhelms her as it is. It is sour and cold and it makes her stomach churn and bile rise in her throat.

She hurries into the living room.

“Call him,” Peter is saying to the startled sheriff. “Hurry!”

“What the hell is going on?” John asks, his brow creased in consternation, but he’s already tapping at the screen of his phone.

Derek is at Peter’s heels, and he spins around when Laura enters the room. His face is pale, and drawn, and his eyes are as wide. He reaches out to grasp Laura’s wrist, and Laura’s heart skips a beat. She can’t remember the last time Derek touched her.

“Something’s wrong,” he says. His fingers digging in. “Something’s wrong with Stiles.”

A strange stab of uncertain anxiety hits—is Derek’s bond with Stiles stronger than his pack bond with _her_?—but she pushes it down and stares at the sheriff.

“It’s going straight to his messages,” John says. “What do you mean something’s wrong with Stiles?”

It’s Peter who answers. “Derek can sense it.”

“What?” John glares up at him. “Werewolves are psychic now?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, John. Everyone knows that psychics aren’t real.” Peter says, keeping his tone light while he exchanges a worried look with Laura. “Call him again.”

The sheriff jabs at the screen of his phone one more time, and lifts the phone to his ear. “Stiles,” he says, and Laura’s heart skips a hopeful beat. “Call me back when you get this message, kid.”

Laura feels the prick of Derek’s claws against the soft skin of her inner wrist. She turns her wrist in his grasp, takes his hand in hers, and then laces their fingers together and squeezes.

“Call Parrish,” Peter tells the Sheriff, and turns around and steps into Derek’s space. He curls his hand around the back of Derek’s neck, and leans in and presses their foreheads together. “We’ll figure this out, pup, hmm? We’ll figure this out.”

“Parrish,” the sheriff says into his phone. “Can you get someone to head down to the college and see if Stiles’s Jeep is in the parking lot? I’m trying to call him, and his phone is going straight to messages.” There’s an underlying tension in his tone that suggests he’s more worried than he wants to let on. “Peter and Derek are pretty convinced there’s something wrong.”

Laura meets Derek’s wide-eyed gaze.

“I felt it,” Derek murmurs. “He was terrified, and I felt it. It’s _Kate_. It has to be!”

And Laura really wishes there was another explanation, but she has a feeling the universe isn’t going to be that kind to them—or Stiles—about this. Of course it’s Kate. Derek’s right. Who else would it be?

Laura draws a deep breath, and releases Derek’s hand. Then she steps past him and Peter and sits down next to the sheriff on the couch.

“If it’s Kate,” she says, “then she’ll let us know it. And we will track her down and make her pay if she has even dared touch a hair on his head.”

She injects her voice with the sort of quiet determination she used to hear in her mother’s tone during a crisis—she is the _alpha_ —and Peter gives her a solemn, approving nod. Derek nods too, his mouth pressed together in a thin, worried line.

“We will find him,” she tells the sheriff, leaving no room for argument on that score, “and bring him home safely.”

What was it that Laura decided all those months ago when she came back to Beacon Hills?

That she was through running.

Laura is the alpha, and it’s her job to protect her pack.

 

***

 

Parrish reports back that Stiles’s Jeep is still at the college, but there’s no sign of Stiles.

Twenty minutes later, his cruiser is pulling into the sheriff’s driveway.

And twenty minutes after that, the sheriff gets a call from an unknown number.

John stares at his phone for a moment, and if Laura couldn’t hear the sudden frantic flurry of his heartbeat, she doesn’t think she’d even be able to tell he was scared. He hits the button to accept the call. “Who is this?”

And then Laura hears that familiar voice on the other end, shaky yet still strong. “It’s me. Dad, she has a gun, and she says that you need to release Gerard Argent from custody or she’ll kill me.”

“ _Stiles_ ,” John says, and his voice hits the same pitch as Laura’s own fear.

 

***

 

Laura wants to be an alpha, a leader, but she feels less like one now than she has in a long time as she leans on the arm of the couch and watches the others try to muddle this out. There can’t be a single person in the house who feels more unqualified to contribute in this situation, except maybe Derek. John and Parrish are police officers, and Peter is a left hand. Between them, they’ve got strategizing covered. Not that it gets them very far.

“Sir.” Parrish’s expression is grave. “If you let Gerard Argent disappear, then you’re giving him and Kate free rein to do this to the kid of the next cop who arrests them.”

John rubs his forehead and grimaces. “I’m not asking you if I _should_ , Parrish. I’m asking you if it’s _possible_!” 

“Of course it’s possible,” Peter butts in. “The problem is that even if you release Gerard, Kate won’t let Stiles go.”

Three very different men, Laura thinks, each of them good in their own way, but they have three very incompatible mindsets when it comes to this. Three very different men, each hitting their heads against three very different walls, and Laura is tired of watching them do it.

She stands up and leaves the room, heading for the comparative clear air of the kitchen. Derek pads silently after her.

“I’m going to make tea,” she announces, and then realises that no, actually, this isn’t her house, and it doesn’t have her Assam in it, and apparently the Stilinski men are not tea drinkers. She can’t even find any Earl Grey, so she rethinks her strategy. “Or maybe coffee.”

Derek’s gaze tracks her.

“You remember how Mom used to make us tea all the time?” she asks him. “You never liked it. You said tea just tasted like dirty water.”

His mouth quirks up. It’s not even the ghost of a smile, really. It’s just the acknowledgement that Laura has shared a memory with him, and that Derek recalls it too.

Laura sighs and hits the button on the coffee maker.

Mom would never have let her pack bond with Derek deteriorate so far. She would never have let any of them feel alone. Half the time that was what she used the pack bond for! The Hale kids never had the excuse of not knowing when it was time to come home from dinner, because Talia Hale just used their bonds to reel them back home again. Sometimes, Laura remembers, she could even hear Mom calling her home by name. She didn’t hear it with her human ears though. She heard it with the wolf’s ears, pricked and twitching.

The wolf is listening now, prowling and growling in Laura’s core, and demanding to be listened to in return. If Laura really is the alpha, then why has the wolf been kept on a leash for so very long?

Laura hasn’t got the skills of any of the men in the living room, but she has something they don’t have: the alpha spark.

 _Use it_ , her wolf tells her, baring its teeth.

“Derek.” Laura ignores the burbling coffee maker. “Do you remember how Mom used to call us through our bonds?”  

Derek nods.

“If you felt Stiles’s fear through your bond, if it’s strong enough for that, then can you talk to him the way that Mom talked to us?”

“I…I don’t know.” His brows tug together. “Peter was helping me earlier, when it happened.”

“How did he help?” Laura asks. Derek’s packs bonds have been so tattered and torn for years that Laura has hardly been able to see them anymore. She’s been afraid that Derek is almost an omega, and yet somehow Peter had not only brought him back into the fold, but he’d helped him to repair his pack bonds, and to forge new ones.

Derek holds her gaze. “He said it was about trust, touch and time.”

Laura is too afraid to ask if Derek still trusts here, and they don’t exactly have time, so that leaves exactly one option. She tugs her t-shirt up. Her borrowed sweatpants are hanging loosely off her hips, exposing her abdomen to the air. She reaches out and takes Derek’s hand, and presses his palm to the slight curve—not even a paunch yet—of her belly.

“I know you have a connection with Stiles,” she says, listening to the tiny, rapid heartbeat inside her as it flutters against Derek’s touch. “A stronger one than I do. But here’s another one. That heartbeat you can feel, that’s because of Stiles. It’s Stiles’s blood flowing in there. Use it.”

Laura doesn’t even know what she’s doing, or what she’s asking Derek to do, so she sure as hell doesn’t know if it will actually work. She’s acting on instinct only. She loves Stiles, and she needs to help him, and her wolf somehow knows that Derek is the only one who can because Derek is Stiles’s _mate_.

Laura’s wolf feels no need to snap and posture and make her beta bear his throat to her.

Laura and Derek can both love Stiles, because Stiles has given them both something immeasurably valuable. Derek gets a mate and Laura gets a baby, and there is no room for jealousy in that. Even the alpha wolf is a simple enough creature. It doesn’t deal in nuance, or in nonsense. The alpha wolf wanted a pup. She is happy. And her brother-beta wanted a mate. He is happy. There is no conflict here except where human thoughts create it.

“You’re allowed to be happy, Derek,” she whispers. “We both are. Follow the bond and find him, please.”

He blinks at her, and nods, and exhales slowly. And then he blinks again, slower this time, and again, and then his eyes slide closed.

Laura studies his face. There’s a customary faint crease along his forehead, and a furrow between his drawn-together brows, but his expression relaxes as the seconds tick by into minutes. His breathing evens out, and his heartbeat slows into a rhythm that mimics sleep.

“Find him,” Laura whispers.  

Derek’s fingers tremble for a moment against Laura’s belly.

“Where are you, Stiles?” he asks at last. He tilts his head, his eyes still closed. He pauses as though waiting for an answer. “No. Where are you, Stiles?”

“Der?” Laura releases his name on a breath, but she’s not sure he hears her.

“Stiles.” Derek’s eyes shift behind his eyelids. “Where _are_ you?”

Laura presses his hand more firmly against her abdomen, unsure if this is helping or not, but something’s happening, right?

And suddenly Derek rears back, gasping for breath. “Value Inn. Room 17. He’s at the Value Inn!”

Laura feels the wolf inside her howl, calling the pack to her side, calling the moon as a witness, and calling down the hunt.

Her eyes flash alpha red. “Then let’s go get him,” she says, “and tear out her throat if she’s hurt him.”

Derek’s eyes flash in return, and a rumbling growl of agreement rises in his chest.

The Hale wolves have been prey for too long.

It’s time they remembered how to be predators.


	23. Chapter 23

The Value Inn is on the outskirts of Beacon Hills, near one of the exits to the highway. It’s the sort of uninspiring three-star place that attracts people passing through town who just want a clean bed for the night before hitting the road again in the morning. Nobody comes here for the view, or the amenities. There’s not even a restaurant, but there’s a sign in the foyer telling people about the Denny’s a few doors down. Derek moves straight past the sign, his steps swallowing up lengths of the ugly patterned beige carpet.

Laura is at his side, and Derek can feel his own worry, and his own cold determination, reflected back at him through the pack bond they share. He’s restless, his nerves wound tighter than springs. His fangs itch in his gums and his claws are ready to pop. He’s scared—Kate has held court in every one of his nightmares for years now—but not scared enough to not be here, because Stiles is inside this motel and that’s all that matters.

He glances over his shoulder to check they’re not being followed.

Laura rolls her shoulders as she walks, like a fighter about to climb into the ring. Her fists aren’t clenched though. No being that can make claws will naturally make a fist. Laura keeps her fingers splayed like the weapons they are, and Derek follows her example.

He’s always known that Laura is his alpha—ever since her eyes first flashed red after the fire—but this is almost like the first time he’s felt it instinctively. This is the first time his wolf hasn’t cowered from the knowledge, afraid of what it means—it’s _his_   fault, his fault the rest of the pack was killed and Laura’s eyes glow red—and instead falls easily into step with her, ready to follow her lead, wherever it may take them. Laura is the Hale alpha, and Derek will fight at her side.

The reach the end of the hall and make a turn, following the ascending numbers on the doors. Even before they reach room 17, Derek can hear it: a dull thumping sound and the muffled grunts of two bodies hitting hard.

A human’s ears might not pick up the sounds, but a wolf’s do.

 _Stiles_.

Laura begins to run, and Derek is a half step behind her.

He can smell blood.

Laura doesn’t stop when they reach the door of room 17. She pushes right through it, and the wood splinters and the flimsy lock breaks. The door bursts open and they rush inside.

It’s a typical hotel room. A bed with an ugly comforter. Matching ugly curtains hanging in the windows. A TV and a mini-fridge. And, at the end of the bed, Stiles is on the floor, grasping Kate’s wrists and trying to hold her off him as she attempts to stab him with the knife she’s gripping. Stiles’s wrists and ankles are bound, and his body is taut as he tries to buck her off him. His hands are bleeding: defensive wounds. Blood runs down his straining forearms.

Kate looks up as they rush inside, and rears back.

Underneath her, Stiles twists and jerks, managing to roll over onto his stomach. He tries to pull himself away from her, but she’s too quick for him. She drops the knife, and instead tugs a gun from out of the waistband of her jeans and presses the barrel against the back of Stiles’s head.

Stiles freezes.

“Nobody move,” Kate says, breathless, a wide grin on her face as she looks at Laura and then Derek. She shifts her weight, still straddling Stiles’s hips, and he makes a small, pained noise. Her smile turns to something sickeningly saccharine. “Derek. It’s been a while. Look at you, sweetie. You’ve grown up in all the right ways, haven’t you?”

There’s a sixteen-year-old boy inside him who is terrified, but the wolf steps up. It won’t let her get to him. It won’t ever be fooled by her again. It bares its teeth at her and growls.

“Let Stiles go,” Laura says, her voice low and unwavering. “You want us, Kate? Well here we are.”

“Here you are,” Kate agrees, her eyes shining with delight. “The little baby alpha of the Hale pack, and her pathetic, weak beta. Where’s your left hand, _alpha_? Because he should have told you what an incredibly bad idea it was to come after me like this.”

Laura glances at Derek.

Kate laughs. “He doesn’t know, does he? You and Derek came all this way here without telling him, didn’t you? Fuck. You’re even more stupid than you look!”

“Let Stiles go,” Laura repeats.

Kate grips Stiles’s hair in her fist, and twists roughly, grinding his face into the carpet. He grimaces, scrunching his face up with pain.

Kate laughs again. “So what’s the deal here? What sort of mojo have you got going on that you were able to find him?” She digs the barrel of the gun into the back of Stiles’s neck. “Someone had better start talking, or I’ll blow his brains out on this carpet.”

“It’s a mate bond,” Derek says, his heart racing. “We have a mate bond.”

Stiles twists his head slightly, one side of his face still pressed into the floor, and stares up at him with a whiskey-brown eye.

“A _mate_  bond? With _you_?” Kate snorts. “Aw, sheriff’s kid, let me give you some advice. You can do better, trust me. He might look pretty, but he can’t fuck for shit.” She lowers her voice to a purr. “Ask me how I know.”

“I got it, thanks,” Stiles mumbles into the carpet.

Derek can feel the sour tang of his disgust washing back and forth between them.

“If you kill Stiles,” Laura says, “then the sheriff won’t release your father.”

“No,” Kate corrects with a cocky grin. “If I kill Stiles and the sheriff _finds out_ , then he won’t release my father. Don’t worry about me though, alpha. I’m not intending on leaving anyone who can go tattling. By the time the sheriff finds your corpses, my father will be halfway to Sacramento.” She smiles sweetly, and moves the barrel of the gun to the back of Stiles’s skull. Drags it through his hair and says, almost wistfully, “I never did like loose ends.”

Derek’s stomach clenches.

“Peter,” Laura says softly.

And behind the ugly hotel curtains, the window shatters inward.

 

***

 

Derek is sixteen, and he has a secret. It’s a good kind of secret—the sort that fills him with so much happiness that he’s just bursting to tell. It feels like soda bubbles on his tongue. It makes him want to laugh.

“What’s up with you anyway?” Laura grouses at him. She’s shitty because she didn’t want to come all the way into town to collect him after basketball practice, but she had to because last week Derek mowed the lawn when it was her turn and she owes him. “You’ve been weird and happy for _weeks_.”

It’s late, but the coach has been riding them for weeks now, because for the first time in years the team might make the state finals, so they’ve been practicing at all sorts of ridiculous times. Even Mom has been complaining about all the crazy hours Derek has been expected to be at school. Okay, so he’s made some of them up, and just let her assume that’s where he is, when really he’s been sneaking away to see Kate.

“You think it’s weird because I’m happy?” Derek asks, climbing into the front seat of Laura’s beat up old truck.

“No, I said you’re being weird _and_   happy,” she corrects him. “Not weird _because_   you’re happy.”

“Can we get burgers on the way home?” he asks, slinging his stinking gym bag into the foot well. Tonight really was a practice. “I’m starving.”

“Have you got any money?” Laura starts the truck, and the engine hesitates and splutters before turning over.

“No.”

“Then no,” Laura says and rolls her eyes. “I’m already spending gas money on you, little bro. I’m not buying you burgers as well.”

Derek snorts, but even Laura’s refusal isn’t enough to take the edge off his happiness.

Beacon Hills at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night isn’t exactly an inspiring sight as they drive through it, but Derek likes it. It’s quiet and unremarkable, but it’s home. One day, he thinks, he’d like to actually take Kate out on a proper date. Maybe they could go to a movie, and then get something to eat at the diner—no, at a proper restaurant. He can get a job in the summer, and start earning some money. Kate’s not like cheerleaders at school, always asking their boyfriends for presents to prove how much they love them. She’s not materialistic like that, but Derek thinks he’d like to take her on a real date, with a real dinner, and maybe buy her some pretty earrings or something. How much do earrings cost? He wants to get nice ones, not cheap ones.

And he’d like to introduce Kate to his family as well. He knows the age difference is something Mom’s not going to be happy about, but he also knows that it’ll be okay once she realises that he and Kate are mates. And like Kate says, it doesn’t matter how they started out, only where they end up, right? Kate is his mate, and they’re going to be together forever.

Laura swings the truck onto the road leading out to the Preserve.

Her forehead creases suddenly.

“What?” Derek asks.

“Can you…” She sniffs the air. “Can you smell _smoke_?”

That’s the moment that Derek’s whole world shatters.

 

***

 

The curtain billows as Peter crashes through the window, and then he’s on her. The gun goes off—a short, silenced pop that’s hardly audible—but then it’s skittering across the ugly carpet and sliding under the bed. Peter is on Kate, and Stiles is caught up under both of them, but by the time Derek leaps forward to drag him out it’s already over.

Peter stands up, hauling Kate to her feet. He has a clawed hand wrapped around her throat, and his eyes are glowing.

Laura steps forward, smiling. “You really thought I’d come here without my left hand? You really thought I’d steal his opportunity to rip your worthless throat out?”

Kate’s eyes roll in her head as Peter squeezes. “Derek? Derek!”

There was a time, probably, when Derek would have done anything she asked of him. But that time is long passed.

He ignores her, and crouches down in front of Stiles. Uses a claw to cut through the tape on his ankles and wrists, and catches his hands. They’re bleeding, but the cuts appear shallow enough. His t-shirt is also slashed in places, blood soaking into the fabric like blotting paper, but again, the cuts are shallow. He defended himself well.

“Are you okay?” he asks Stiles, and helps him onto the bed.

Stiles sags down beside him. He nods. His face is pale. “Where—where’s my dad? “

“He’s coming,” Derek says, listening for the sheriff’s heartbeat.

The entire thing has only lasted for minutes. Poor John Stilinski is probably still hobbling in from the parking lot. He was not happy at all when Laura, Derek and Peter took off for the hotel at a run. Neither was Parrish. But the last thing they wanted was to give Kate another couple of human targets.

Peter is bleeding black blood from a hole in his side, but he’s grinning triumphantly as though he can’t even feel it yet.

“Derek!” Kate pleads, and then tries another tack. “Stiles, your father is the sheriff. You know he won’t want them to do this!”

“How old were you?” Stiles asks Derek softly, ignoring Kate.

“Sixteen.”

Stiles grips his hands tightly, and Derek’s skin is suddenly slick with his blood. “Hey, Peter,” he says, but doesn’t look away from Derek’s gaze. “Rip her fucking throat out.”

Derek hears a small strangled noise, and then—

“Wait!” Sheriff Stilinski and Parrish appear in the doorway. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Derek looks at Peter. Peter is sharp-eyed and thin-lipped.

Derek wasn’t at home all those years ago when the fire started. Neither was Laura. They got there when it was already too late to do anything. But Peter had been there. Peter walked through fire to try and save the pack, even though he had failed.

This time, Derek thinks, he’s getting ready to do it again. 

“I’m doing what I always said I would, Sheriff,” he says. “I’m doing my duty as the left hand of the Hale pack.”

The Sheriff is a man of the law, and so is Parrish. Whatever happens here, Derek thinks, could ruin whatever tentative bonds they’ve built.

“Well, hell, Peter,” the sheriff says, his mouth turning down at the corners. “You can’t just rip her throat out!”

Relief floods over Kate’s frozen expression.

Peter’s eyes flash.

“At least take her into the bathroom and slash it,” the sheriff says, his voice colder than Derek has ever heard it before. “How else are we going to make it look like a suicide?”

Peter gives a feral grin.

 

***

 

Derek doesn’t start to shake until he, Laura and Peter have slipped out a fire door with Stiles, leaving Parrish and the sheriff to set the scene. Literally.

The call that Kate made to the sheriff’s phone? That’s now a call from a deeply troubled woman who threatened to harm herself if the sheriff didn’t release her father.

When Parrish and the sheriff went to the location she’d provided, they were unable to get into her room. In the end, the sheriff managed to break down the door just as Parrish smashed the window with his cruiser’s emergency hammer.

Tragically, they were too late.

“Tragically,” Peter says now, sampling the word. He laughs, as though he likes the taste of it.

“Hey,” Stiles says, and wraps his hand around Derek’s. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” Derek asks.

Stiles squeezes his hand tightly until it stops shaking. “Ask me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Derek says, a wave of relief hitting him. They have a tomorrow now, and Stiles still wants Derek around in it. “I’ll ask you tomorrow.”

For now, it’s time to go home.


	24. Chapter 24

It’s late—almost midnight—when Dad finally gets dropped home by Parrish, but Stiles is still awake. He’s showered, and changed into his pajamas, and he’s been lying on his bed wondering if he’ll ever get to sleep. When he hears Parrish’s cruiser pulling up, he pushes his comforter off him, wincing at his stinging hands, and trails downstairs in time to meet Dad at the front door.

“Come here, kid,” Dad says, his face drawn, and Stiles steps forward into his hug. It’s awkward with the crutches, but they make it work. “How are your hands?”

Stiles steps back and shows him the patchwork of Bandaids. “Okay. Nothing that needs stiches.”

Dad sags with relief.

“Are you okay?” Stiles asks.

“Getting there.”

“How about Parrish?” Stiles swallows. “You guys are good?”

“We’re on the same page,” Dad says, and Stiles thinks from his tone that he’s drawing a line in the sand here, and nothing is ever going to be said about what happened in that motel room ever again. Stiles can get behind that. He never would have thought his dad would be the kind of cop who would help cover up a murder, but, also, he’s having a hard time feeling morally conflicted about it. Kate Argent was a killer, and she deserved everything she got as far as Stiles is concerned. Then again, Stiles has never sworn an oath to uphold the law, has he?

Stiles hugs him again, and hopes that says more than his words could. “I can smell cigarettes on you, by the way. Don’t think I don’t know just because you’ve tried to drown yourself in air freshener.”

Dad gives a guilty start.

“You’re quitting.”

“It’s really not an everyday thing.”

“You’re quitting,” Stiles repeats. “I want you around for a lot more years yet, okay?”

“Yeah.” Dad rubs his back awkwardly. “Okay, kid. That sounds like a plan.”

“Good.” Stiles closes his eyes for a moment, and draws in a deep breath. “About Laura and the baby. I—”

“Kid,” Dad says. He leans back so he can look Stiles in the eye. “I’m sorry. I was hurt, and I took it out on you. I was hurt you felt you had to make that arrangement in the first place, that I’d failed you by putting you in that position, and I was hurt that I wouldn’t get a chance to know the baby. But whatever relationship you and Laura end up with, and you and the baby, that’s for you guys to figure out.”

“It is?” Stiles wrinkles his nose.

“Yeah.” Dad smiles. “Turns out I’ll get to be an honorary grandpa anyway. I don’t think we’re getting rid of the Hales any time soon, kid.”

Stiles feels warmth flood through him.

“You’re not,” Peter says, appearing from out of nowhere. For a guy who only a few hours ago got a bullet dug out of him with nothing but a pair of tweezers by Laura as Stiles watched, equally fascinated and grossed out, he looks incredibly chipper. “Now come and sit down so you don’t strain your knee. I’ve made you grilled cheese.”

Dad looks pleased. “I love grilled cheese.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Of course you do.”

Grilled cheese. Stiles has fallen into some alternate dimension where his dad gives a werewolf the okay to kill someone—but only if he makes it look like suicide—and apparently they’re discussing grilled cheese. What the _fuck_? Like, Stiles has always been an overthinker, and it’s got him in a lot of shit in the past, but this is totally underthinking, right? What he’s seeing here? If anything should be overthought, isn’t it murder and police cover-ups?

And also babies and contracts and parental shit?

And also _also_   what Derek said back at the motel? A mate bond? Stiles is pretty sure it saved his life today, but what the fuck _is_   it? Whatever it is, it feels big.

Stiles has way too much to think about, and he is totally off kilter right now.

But he’s alive, right? So he’s got that going for him.

Yeah.

He heads through to the kitchen to get himself a soda.

He’s got that going for him.

 

***

 

Stiles takes his soda upstairs. There’s no light coming from underneath the door of Laura and Derek’s room, but Stiles can hear the low murmur of their voices, so he leans on the door and knocks softly. “You guys awake still?”

“Come in, Stiles,” Laura says.

Stiles shuffles inside, and sets his soda down on the chest of drawers.

The room is in darkness, but there’s enough moonlight filtering through the window that he can still see well enough. Laura and Derek are in bed, and Laura is hogging all the blankets, leaving Derek stretched out beside her in his sweatpants and a tank top.

“Hey,” Stiles says, and the word has never felt so stupidly inadequate.

“Get in here,” Laura says, flinging her blankets back.

Well, fuck it, right?

Stiles climbs into bed between them, and wrestles for control of Laura’s pillow. She lets him win.

“I have questions,” he says at last.

Laura elbows him. “Of course you do.”

Stiles darts a glance at Derek, and catches him watching him back. “What’s a mate bond?”

“Do you want me to answer that, or is it something you want to talk to Derek about?” Laura asks.

“I mean, I guess you can give me the low down?” Stiles’s arm is pressed up against Derek. It feels nice. He shifts, looking for Derek’s hand and finding it. He laces their fingers together. Derek’s palm feels weird against all his Bandaids. “Then maybe me and Derek can figure out what we need to figure out from there.”

“Okay,” Laura says. “A mate bond is a type of pack bond that happens between mated pairs. It means that you’re very in tune with the other person, and that you can feel what they’re feeling, and they can feel what you’re feeling. It’s like any other bond though. If you nurture it, it gets stronger. If you reject it, it can break.”

“Okay, but I don’t even know what a pack bond is,” Stiles says. “Explain it like I’m five.”

“Pack bonds are like…” Laura is silent for a moment. “They’re like what holds us together and tells us we belong. They’re like…”

“They’re love,” Derek says softly. “Like how you and your dad love another. With a side order of low-grade empath ability.”

“There it is,” Stiles says. “This guy knows how to explain it like I’m five! Thank you, Derek.”

Laura snorts.

“And a mate bond is stronger than a pack bond?” Stiles asks curiously. “Because Derek used it to ask me where I was in a _freaking dream_!”

“It’s not stronger,” Laura says. “Not exactly. But Derek was able to use your mate bond, and your pack bond, and the baby’s blood bond. You’re the trifecta of bonds, Stiles, even if you’re not a werewolf.”

“Huh.” Stiles exhales slowly while he turns it all over in his brain, and no. No, none of it makes sense yet. But maybe it will, in the future, when Stiles has had a chance to work through what happened today first. “Thanks, by the way, for telling my dad he could still be a grandpa. I guess you’ve figuratively ripped that contract up, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks. I’m still not ready to be a dad though, just so you know.”

Laura nudges him. “That’s totally fine, Stiles. I can see you as more of the cool uncle anyway.”

“Right?” Stiles laughs, his heart fluttering as he imagines it.

The cool uncle. Stiles will be the guy who turns up with the most obnoxious noise-making toys that he can find. He’ll be the guy who gets to take the kid to see all the fun movies, and do all the fun things. The mall Santa! Stiles is going to have a legitimate reason to line up to see the mall Santa! He’s going to be Uncle Stiles.

And a part of him can’t help imagining himself not just as Uncle Stiles because of his own connection to the baby, but also Uncle Stiles because he and Uncle Derek have a mate bond. Is a mate bond like being werewolf married?

Stiles reels that thought in before it leads him crazy places. He’s only known Derek for two days. He should go for at least a week before he’s writing their initials in a love heart on the inside cover of his school diary, right?

He clears his throat. “I think I can manage cool uncle status. Hey, does that make you my sister? I always kind of wanted a sister, so that’s cool.”

“It is cool,” Laura agrees.

“I never wanted to impregnate my sister though,” Stiles says. “That totally came out of left field.”

“Yep. Gross.” Laura throws the comforter back and climbs out of bed. “On that weird incestuous note, I’m going to sleep in your bed, Stiles. You can stay here. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight!”

Beside him, Derek shakes as he tries not to laugh.

 

***

 

The night draws on, and Stiles’s soda slowly turns warm and flat where he left it. He thinks of it once, regretfully, but he’s too comfortable to move. Well, to move far. Because somehow while he’s been lying here, he’s rolled towards Derek, and they’re sharing a pillow and their legs are tangled together, and it should feel incredibly awkward…but it doesn’t. Of all the crazy shit that’s happened in the last few days, this is the one thing that feels like it makes sense.

The moonlight gleams in Derek’s eyes, and he blinks.

Stiles resists the urge to raise his hand and trace Derek’s stubbly jaw—and then rethinks resisting the urge at all. Because why the hell shouldn’t he do it?

So he does it, drawing his fingertips along that surprisingly soft scruff, and is rewarded with a shy smile from Derek.

“I don’t really know what it means to be mates,” Stiles says at last. “I don’t know what sort of relationship you want, or even if you’re attracted to me physically—”

“I am,” Derek says.

Stiles feels the heat rise in his face. “Um, awesome. Because totally reciprocated here, no question. But I also think there’s a lot of stuff we need to work out, so what I’m saying is that I want to take this slow, you know? I don’t want to mess things up.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“See?” Stiles rubs his thumb along Derek’s jaw. “That just proves you don’t know a thing about me yet.”

Derek’s smile grows.

“Are you okay with taking it slow?”

“Yes.” Derek nods. “I’m okay with that.”

And Stiles thinks of Kate, and what she said back in the hotel, and how Derek was only sixteen, and he knows that Derek is dealing with a deeper pain than Stiles can even imagine. Stiles never wants to hurt him like he’s been hurt before. Stiles can be reckless and brash and thoughtless of other people’s feelings as he streamrolls right over them, but for Derek he can also be patient and careful and slow. Because whatever this thing is between them, it’s a warm glow inside of Stiles, and he wants to nurture it, and tend to it as gently as he can. Because there’s one thing he knows for certain, as sure as breathing, and it’s written in his heart now: Derek Hale is worth waiting for.

There will be lots of nights like this in the future, and there will be lots of days too, and Derek will have room in every single one of them. There will be school, and Dad, and pack, and a baby he gets to be an uncle to, and at the heart of it all there will be Derek.

And Stiles will mess up sometimes, and Derek will too, but those will just be stupid bumps on the road that won’t even matter, because it’s the journey that counts in the end. And the journey, Stiles thinks, will be beautiful.

He smiles as he traces his fingertips along the line of Derek’s jaw, and gently leans in to brush their mouths together.

It’s brief and soft, and barely a touch at all.

It’s their first kiss of thousands more to come.

It’s their first step on the road that is their lives together, and that warm glow inside Stiles’s chest burns bright and golden.

He leans back again. “Was that okay?”

“Yes, Stiles,” Derek whispers back to him. “That was perfect.”

Perfect.

Stiles likes the sound of that.

 


	25. Chapter 25

_Epilogue_

 

“Stiles?”

Stiles grumbles into his pillow.

“Stiles?” Derek shakes him gently on the shoulder again. “Stiles, it’s time. We have to go to the hospital.”

And just like that Stiles is awake, heart pounding, and stumbling out of bed before his feet know what they’re doing. Luckily Derek is there to catch him before he face-plants into the wall and has to go, well, to the hospital.

He pulls on his jeans and his hoodie over his boxers and the old Stud Muffin t-shirt he sleeps in, and then Derek is holding his shoes out to him, because in every relationship there is one disaster and one person who keeps that disaster more or less together. At least that’s what Derek says, but Derek, as Stiles has been delighted to discover over the course of their relationship, has a wicked sense of humour. At least Stiles thinks he’s joking.

Stiles grabs for his car keys, but Derek holds his own up. “I’ll drive.”

Well, the Camaro will get them there faster.

“What time is it anyway?” Stiles asks, dragging his hands through his hair.

“Almost three.”

“In the _morning_?”

“No, Stiles,” Derek tells him, deadpan. “It’s three in the afternoon. It’s just really, really overcast.”

Normally Stiles would snark right back at him, but tonight his brain is too fried for that. Also, _holy shit_ , Laura’s having the baby!

“Race you to the car!” he yells instead.

Derek catches him by the back of the hoodie before he falls down the stairs.

 

***

 

The hospital parking lot is mostly empty at this hour, but Stiles still recognises a few of the cars.

“Shit! My dad is here already?”

“Well, he was working tonight,” Derek says, and pulls the Camaro in next to Dad’s cruiser. “It makes sense he’d beat us here.”

“Derek!” Stiles points at a car a few spaces down. “Erica and Boyd beat us here too!”

Erica and Boyd might live closer to the hospital, but still. Sometimes Stiles is still adjusting to this whole pack thing, where everybody is involved with everything. He grew up as an only child in a single parent household. It still feels weird to him that the pack is so easy with everyone living in everyone else’s pockets. Good weird, but weird.

And Erica and Boyd have been excellent additions to the pack. Erica doesn’t get seizures since she took the bite, and she’s got her driver’s licence now, and she’s finally living life to the fullest. And Boyd is an incredible beta. He’s loyal, and calm, and always the voice of reason. He still doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s always worth listening to.

“We’d better hurry up then,” Derek says, locking the Camaro.

Stiles splashes through a puddle courtesy of yesterday’s rain, and he and Derek make for the hospital.

The hospital is bright and soulless, in the way that all public buildings are in the middle of the night. Stiles’s damp Converse squeak on the linoleum as he and Derek hurry towards the elevators.

The maternity rooms are on the second floor.

When the elevator doors slide open in the waiting room, Stiles darts forward to greet the pack.

“Hey, kiddo.” Dad gives him a warm hug. “You made it at last, huh?”

“Hey! It’s not my fault everyone else is like the Speed Racer!”

Peter snorts at him from behind a magazine. “If I’m old enough to understand that reference, Stiles, it’s time to let it go.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles mutters, and goes over to sit with Boyd and Erica.

“What’s the news?” Derek asks, jamming his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Peter sets his magazine aside. “We haven’t heard anything yet.”

Derek nods, and sits down next to Stiles.

“Nervous?” Boyd asks them.

Derek gives a stoic nod. Stiles makes a sound not unlike a small animal trapped in a tight place. Nervous is an understatement. Stiles is shitting himself.

He looks up when he hears the slap-slap-slap of little feet on the floor, and moments later a tiny figure rounds the corner into the waiting room, his chubby fists full of candy from the vending machine.

“Uncle Stiles!” the little boy yells, delighted. “Uncle Derek!”

Stiles braces himself for the impact of Hurricane Jamie, catching the little boy against his chest as he leaps at him. “Hey, kiddo! How’s my favourite nephew?”

“I got candy!” Jamie declares proudly, shoving some into Stiles’s face.

“Oooh! A sugar rush at three in the morning! What could possibly go wrong?” Stiles asks him, making his eyes go big.

Jamie crows with delight.

“Your dad is a masochist, little guy,” Stiles tells him.

Parrish, still tucking his wallet back into his jeans, rounds the corner after Jamie.

“Daddy!” Jamie exclaims, and waves his candy at him.

Sometimes, Stiles looks at Jamie and still thinks, out of the blue, _That kid is my_ son.

But then he sees the way that Parrish interacts with him, and realises the deeper truth: it takes more than blood to make a father, and Parrish is unquestionably Jamie’s dad. He really doesn’t know if it was Laura or Parrish who was more surprised when they finally stopped tip-toeing around one another and admitted their feelings, but they’ve been married for over a year now and couldn’t be happier.   

It’s pretty weird the way everything worked out, and wow, Laura’s timing was really, really off, because if she’d just waited another year she and Stiles never would have come to their crazy arrangement. Then again, if they hadn’t, Jamie wouldn’t be here, and there’s a good chance Stiles would never have learned about werewolves, or about mates.

The universe is a total shitshow, but sometimes things shake out just right.

“Hey, guys,” Parrish says. “You doing okay?”

Stiles and Derek share a dubious look, and Parrish laughs.

A few minutes later a nurse appears. “Deputy Parrish?” she asks. “You can go in now.”

“Oh, no,” Parrish says. “These guys are taking over now.”

The nurse consults her paperwork. “Oh! Mr. Hale and Mr. Stilinski. Let’s get you in there. Laura’s about ready to go.”

Three hours later, Claudia Talia Stilinski-Hale is born.

 

***

 

Derek takes to fatherhood like a duck to water. Which is lucky, because Stiles feels like he takes to it like a duck to wet concrete. He is insanely jealous of the way that Claudia stops crying whenever Derek cradles her to his chest. When Stiles cradles her to his chest she expresses her outrage loudly and repeatedly. But that’s okay. Stiles is planning on being a champion when it comes to the terrible twos. He’ll really come into his own then, he’s sure. Or maybe when she’s at college. He just has to ride it out until then.

Except suddenly, around the three week mark, Claudia settles, and Stiles gets his first night of uninterrupted sleep (Derek is a hero when it comes to night feedings) and he thinks that yes, he can actually do this. He _is_  actually doing this.

When Claudia is a month old, they drive out to the house in the Preserve. Jamie meets them at the front door, his amber eyes alight with happiness as he inspects his cousin, and then he drags them through the house and out into the back yard, where the pack has gathered for a barbeque.

Dad and Peter are manning the grill.

Parrish and Boyd are in the back garage, inspecting the car that Boyd bought for Erica. It’s a junker—Boyd insists it’s a classic, and Stiles is a philistine, which is probably right—and they’re going to work on it over the summer and get it back into top condition.

Erica and Laura are sitting on loungers in the shade, sipping cold beers.

Stiles wanders over to join them, while Derek goes to show Claudia off to Dad and Peter.

Laura scoots up so there’s room for him to sit at the bottom of her lounger. Jamie squeeze in between them.

“How are you feeling?” Stiles asks Laura.

“Werewolf, Stiles,” she reminds him. “Everything is as toned and tight as it always was.”

“Ew!”

Laura reaches around Jamie to swat him on the arm. “I was talking about my stomach, but thanks for the visual.”

Erica roars with laughter.

“Is it weird for you though?” Stiles asks. “I mean, you carried her for nine months and then you just handed her over to us?”

“I carried her on the understanding that she was my niece,” Laura says with a slight smile. “I just donated an egg and some living space.”

Stiles raises his eyebrows. He’s fairly sure it was at least a little harder than that.

“Besides,” Laura says. “She is mine, because she’s pack. She’s just not my daughter.”

Stiles nods, and puts an arm around Jamie.

His nephew.

He gets it.

 

***

 

The afternoon winds slowly down into evening, and Parrish turns the fairy lights on. The garden is beautiful, and it backs right onto the Preserve. Stiles knows that terrible things happened here once, but Laura has built something beautiful out of that, and Jamie will have nothing but happy memories of his childhood here.

He leans back in his chair, holding a dozing Claudia against his chest, and smiles as Dad, stepping past him, stops long enough to tousle his hair like he’s a little kid again.

Over by the cooler, Boyd and Erica are showing Laura their pick of the plans the architect drew up for the plot of land about a quarter of a mile from this one. As alpha, Laura has final say on the plans, but Stiles knows she’ll be happy as long as Boyd and Erica are.

Derek and Stiles are in the process of building their own place as well, by the creek that marks out the edge of the Hales’ property line. Why should Jamie be the only kid in the pack who gets to grow up with the Preserve as his back yard, right?

It makes sense. This land is the Hales’ blood. It’s their legacy, and they’ve fought to keep it. Their children deserve to share in it.

All of their children.

 

***

 

Stiles doesn’t realise he was dozing until Derek’s leaning over him, carefully lifting Claudia from his arms.

“It’s time to go,” Derek tells him softly.

Stiles blinks around him. The fairly lights are still illuminating the garden, but everyone is in the process of quietly packing up. Jamie has fallen asleep on one of the loungers.

“Okay.” Stiles yawns and stretches, and levers himself out of his chair.

He’s got an early class tomorrow, so they should probably call it a night. After finishing his hated accountancy, Stiles has gone back to college to get his certificate in Administration of Justice because he wants to go to the police academy next fall. Stiles is gunning for Parrish’s position as Dad’s work son. He’s going to become a deputy.

Derek is happy being a stay at home dad for now, but he’s been taking courses online. He completed his GED first, and now he’s two years into early education. He’s good with kids, and he’ll make a great teacher.

Stiles grabs Claudia’s diaper bag from beside his chair, and does the rounds of the yard, saying goodbye to everyone.

“See you at home, kiddo,” Dad says warmly.

He’ll miss his dad and Peter when he and Derek move out to their new place, but Dad is happy in town… and Peter is happy with Dad. Stiles has never actually asked Dad exactly what’s going on there—he’s not sure he wants to know—but it works for them.

Parrish loads Stiles up with leftovers before they leave, and Stiles stacks them in the trunk of the Camaro while Derek buckles Claudia into her capsule.

The headlights bounce off the trees as they take the winding road back to town, and Stiles smiles.

Derek glances over at him. “What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing,” Stiles says, and them amends that. “Everything.”

“I love you,” Derek says.

“I love you too.”

The words live in that warm, golden place inside him that belongs to Derek and the pack.

Stiles sets his hand on the console between the front seats and Derek reaches out for it.

They lace their fingers together and hold hands all the way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... we're done! As always, thank you to everyone who commented along the way, and to the GR crowd whose comments I stalked to steal all the good ideas! 
> 
> If you stay subscribed to this, or to me, there will be a companion fic appearing some time soon, in which you may possibly see Peter actually force the Sheriff to eat the kind of meal he couldn't buy at a gas station at 2 o'clock in the morning. And there may even be feelings!


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